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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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THOMAS COKE 



Thomas Coke 



By 

FRANCIS BOURNE UPHAM 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



Copyright, 1910, by 
EATON & MAINS 




©Ci A259460 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Foreword 5 

I. The England of the Eighteenth 

Century 7 

IL Ideals of Education — Oxford, 

COKESBURY 18 

III. The Influence of Great Men — 

The Wesleys 31 

IV. The Christian Ministry in the 

Established Church 44 

V. Labors in England and Ireland. 55 

VI. On the Atlantic 77 

VII. Labors in America = 88 

VIII. A Bishop Indeed 104 

IX. The Founder of Wesleyan Mis- 
sions 118 



3 



FOREWORD 



It is frequently said that the writer of 
fiction falls in love with his hero. This can 
also be said of the writer of fact Such 
deeds as are recorded in the few pages that 
follow, such aspirations and holy achieve- 
ments at a critical period in the history of a 
militant Church as we see in the life story 
of the early Methodist itinerants, win and 
hold the admiration of men who have en- 
tered into their labors. 

Men who live under sunnier skies than 
their fathers ever saw, who know nothing 
of privation worthy the name, and to whom 
sacrifice means more of pleasure than pain, 
who have inherited helpful tendencies and a 
wealth of tradition, to say nothing of mate- 
rial prosperity, are eager to rise to pay their 
tardy respects to the men who established 
on firm foundations the Church they love 
and serve. 

A task accepted with much misgiving, 
and entered upon with the consciousness of 
loyalty to one's word, has been carried for- 
ward, in the preparation of what follows, 
5 



6 



Foreword 



with increasing delight and eager study. 
These pages might well be styled an appre- 
ciation rather than a record. 

Most surely it is understood that the 
larger biographies of Dr. Coke — that of Mr. 
J. W. Etheridge most especially — furnish 
the basis for all that has been said. Dr. 
Coke's Journal, a few of his discourses, his 
life by Samuel Drew, and the histories and 
biographies that deal with this period have 
been freely consulted. 

'Tis the hope of the writer of this little 
book that Thomas Coke may find as warm 
a place in the regard of those who read 
these pages as he holds in the heart of him 
who has written them. 



CHAPTER I 



THE ENGLAND OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY 

Thomas Coke stands well toward the 
front in a class of men made great by con- 
ditions that made other men small. He 
lived unsullied amid the immoral influences 
of his day, rejected in early life the teach- 
ings of a heartless, thoughtless Church, and 
bvercam.e opposition that caused many a 
lesser man to yield in despair. He was 
strengthend by the testing that weakened 
others — ^grew great in spite of his surround- 
ings; indeed, it could be said of him as it 
could be said only of men of heroic mold, 
he grew great because of them. 

England during the latter half of the 
eighteenth century was no friend to grace 
to bear one on to God, though it was not 
openly a foe. It had its schools and its 
churches. Its colleges bore the most sacred 
names and made the highest professions. 
It was to Jesus College that Thomas Coke, 
when a lad of sixteen, was sent ; and it was 
to Christ Church College that John Wesley. 
7 



8 Thomas Coke 



came from the Charterhouse School in 1720. 
To Jesus and to Christ! Surely in name 
nothing of high profession was lacking. 
But the name was all. "Never shall a child 
of mine enter a public school or university," 
writes Southey. "Perhaps I may not be able 
so well to instruct him in logic or in lan- 
guages, but I can at least preserve him from 
vice/' Pride and haughtiness of spirit, 
impatience and peevishness, sloth and in- 
dolence, gluttony and sensuality were 
specifically charged by Mr. Wesley as char- 
acteristic of the Hfe of the college of his 
day. So was it with the Church. It was 
false to its call. It took the name of God 
in vain, and its profanity was not limited to 
the occasional use of terms of condemna- 
tion rarely heard in the pulpit of to-day. 
Its whole life was a shattering of the com- 
mandment for serious reverence. Laughter 
greeted the man who dared to talk of re- 
ligion. The Bible was largely an unknown 
book. Purity and honesty of purpose on the 
part of the clergy were sadly lacking. One 
day when Dr. Coke was a student he heard 
a sermon that touched him; but to his 
amazement he learned by the frank admis- 
sion of the clergyman who had preached 
it that not a word of it was believed to be 



England of Eighteenth Century 9 



true. Unreality and dishonesty, sham and 
shallowness were manifest in the lives of 
the men who were called to speak of the 
deep things of God and to present the truth 
concerning an eternal destiny. It is not to 
be wondered at that Thomas Coke felt for a 
time during his struggle for a creed that it 
was better to doubt than to believe. Over 
many a pulpit might well have been written 
the sentence, ^'^lany shall follovv' their per- 
nicious ways ; by reason of whom the way 
of truth shall be evil spoken of.'' 

As it was with creed, so was it with 
conduct, for a dishonest belief ever makes 
for dishonorable behavior. ^'Purity and 
fidelity to the marriage vow," says Green 
in his History of the English People, ''were 
sneered out of fashion ; and Chesterfield in 
his letters to his son instructs him in the 
art of seduction as part of a polite educa- 
tion.'^ Dr. Coke tells of scenes during his 
college days that he did not dare to de- 
scribe — midnight revels upon which one 
shrinks to enter even for a moment under 
the guidance of a chastened imagination. 
Against such a background sinners accord- 
ing to the standards of our purer day stand 
out as saints ; and saints — the enthusiastic, 
ascetic youth of the Holy Club, for example 



10 Thomas Coke 



—deserve the traditional halo. How a lad 
with the normal tempestuous tendencies of 
youth could withstand the world, the flesh, 
and the devil on a field where defeat was 
the fashion, the standards were trailed in 
the dust, and the leaders were either cow- 
ards or hypocrites, is more than m.ost of us 
can understand. '*By the grace of God I 
am what I am," was undoubtedly the favor- 
ite text of many an itinerant preacher as 
he made his way unharmed and unspotted 
through a sinning world. 

Thomas Coke did this. Said Bishop As- 
bury when the news of the death of his 
associate reached him, ^'He was a minister 
of Christ, in zeal, in labor, and in services 
the greatest man of the last centur}^'' "It 
is of little consequence," said Dr. Coke as 
he set out for India in 1813, ''whether we 
take our flight to glory from the land of our 
nativity, from the trackless ocean, or the 
shores of Ceylon." He never doubted that 
his flight would be to glory : to doubt would 
have been disloyalty. 

His good birth undoubtedly had much to 
do with the mastery of his maturer life. 
He was born in Brecon, Wales, October 9, 
1747. His father was a physician, success- 
ful and most highly respected. "He was 



Ejigland of Eighteenth Century 1 1 



the beloved and honored patriarch of his 
borough/' says Bishop Hurst, "as his epi- 
taph in the priory church tells." What 
there was — indeed, what there is — in the 
Welsh blood that makes for spirituality we 
do not know ; but 'tis safe to say that there 
is something. From one county in Wales— 
the county of Brecknock — there came many 
of the great men of early Methodism. ''It 
supplied the first evangelist, Harris ; the first 
martyr, Seward; and the first hymnist, 
Williams. It found Charles Wesley an ideal 
wife; it gave Wesleyan Methodism the 
'Father of Missions,' Dr. Coke; it was 
Joseph Pilmoor's circuit before he, with 
Richard Boardman, went to America, in 
1769." So writes Bishop Hurst in his His- 
tory of Methodism. "A grand succession of 
saintly men ministered in the old Brecon 
Chapel," says the Rev. T. Wynne Jones in 
the Methodist Recorder of 1896: "Harris, 
the pioneer of Methodist open-air preach- 
ing ; Whitefield, the Baptist of Methodism ; 
Charles Wesley, the psalmist of the re- 
vival; Coke, the indomitable missionary; 
Fletcher, the saintly theologian ; Benson, the 
erudite commentator ; . . . and Wesley him- 
self." His good birth undoubtedly had 
much to do with his subsequent mastery 



12 Thomas Coke 



over temptations and triumph on a field 
where others met disaster. He was trained 
and well trained too — to use the oft-quoted 
word of Oliver Wendell Holmes—one hun- 
dred years before he was born. He entered 
life with the heritage of a good name, good 
ancestry, and good atmosphere. To breathe 
for generations the pure air of God's heav- 
ens as it swept over the mountains of Wales, 
to look year after year toward the hills 
whence comes man's help, is to be favored 
of God. Enthusiasm amid such scenes is 
native and normal. A singing, shouting 
faith ; a belief in large truth ; a readiness 
to dare great things for God, are met amid 
such surroundings even among the unhon- 
ored and unknown. They are met to-day; 
they may be met to-morrow; they surely 
were met in the days when the Methodist 
itinerants first came shouting the good news 
of a salvation that man might know to be 
his for time and eternity. "He was a foe 
to all enthusiasm," wrote an old Puritan 
over the tomb of his friend on Copps Hill, 
Boston. 'Tis safe to say that neither the 
man who wrote the sentence nor the man 
whose virtues he sought to describe came 
from Wales, Happy the pastor even to- 
day who has in his membership men from 



England of Eighteenth Century 13 



this little principality, away from the beaten 
path of the tourist; the land of song and 
shout, of dream and vision, of exultant 
saints and audacious sinners ; the land where 
one must be extravagant in speech even to 
pronounce the name of the little village 
where he spends the night. Through the 
years of his youth— and his father's youth 
before him — Thomas Coke lived amid such 
scenes. It was from a home blessed by 
such influences that he came to Oxford to 
be enrolled as a gentleman commoner at the 
age of sixteen. 

^len whose names are unknown — ever 
will be unknown — undoubtedly had much 
to do with the holy momentum in the life of 
the lad who came to godless Oxford in 
1763. The humble Christian who says little 
but whose deeds loom large, whose educa- 
tion knows nothing of books but whose ex- 
perience with the great verities of life is 
rich and deep, who never puts pen to paper 
but who offers spontaneous testimony to the 
saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ 
which seem.s because of its power and 
beauty to have come through divine inspira- 
tion — such a man is said to have made a 
deep impression at a critical time a few 
years later on the life of Thomas Coke. 'Tt 



14 Thomas Coke 



was to the pious and communicative sim- 
plicity of this happy rustic/' writes Mr. 
Drew, ^'that Dr. Coke declared he owed 
greater obligations with respect to finding 
peace with God and internal tranquillity of 
soul than to any other person." The history 
of the early Methodist movement will never 
be written so long as the worth of the hum- 
ble layman remains unknown. The effect 
upon the life of the common people of the 
truth proclaimed by Mr. Wesley and his 
followers, the effect that was shown in daily 
conduct and abiding character, the trans- 
formation of the sinner into the saint, this 
had more to do with the making of the life 
of many a man than the best of preaching. 
Charles Wesley declared that he received 
the witness of the Holy Spirit in May, 1738, 
through the agency of a poor mechanic 
named Bray. He says of him that he "knew 
nothing except Christ." The first sermon 
preached in America by Francis Asbur}^ — 
and his choice bears testimony to the 
thought of the humble people from whom 
he came — was from the text, "I determined 
to know nothing among you save Jesus 
Christ and him crucified." The man who 
has never entered history made history ; the 
layman whose name may never be known 



England of Eighteenth Century 15 



till the great day when deeds are disclosed 
and heaven's estimate of character revealed, 
this man or the class he represents made 
many a preacher. Several years ago a 
traveler came to a little village in England 
that was strikingly unlike any of the villages 
about it. Sobriety, cleanliness, and piety 
w^ere manifest everywhere. ''What is the 
explanation of all this?" said he to an old 
man whom he met. "One hundred years 
ago/' was the ready answer, ''there came 
to this town a man by the name of John 
Wesley.''' 

To such a town, to villages alive and 
aglow with the consciousness that God had 
visited his people, as well as to towns deep 
in sin, Thomas Coke must have frequently 
come. He must have seen what ^Methodism 
could do long before he knew what Meth- 
odism was. He must have noticed the life 
of the humble follower long before he met 
the leader. On the page of history cause 
and effect change places with bewildering 
rapidity. Thomas Coke did much for the 
England of his day; England of the 
eighteenth century did much for Thomas 
Coke. 

The direct purpose and immediate call of 
God most surely cannot be overlooked. 



16 Thomas Coke 



Even if one had the puerile thoughtlessness 
that might lead him to do so, he could not 
ignore this if he paid any heed to the words 
of simple trust in the guidance of God that 
animated Thomas Coke. "I am now dead 
for Europe, but alive for India," wrote he 
in 1813. "God himself has said to me, ^Go 
to Ceylon/ I am so fully convinced of the 
will of God that methinks I had rather be 
set naked on the coast of Ceylon and with- 
out a friend than not go there." He be- 
lieved as did his great associates in the 
direct and minute guidance of God. He 
could hardly do otherwise. God must be 
everything to men who lead over an un- 
trodden path, or nothing. He must be near 
by when a sparrow falls, and a raven calls 
for food, as well as when a planet starts to 
swing through space. '^He lived in a world 
of wonders and divine interpositions," 
writes John Richard Green of Mr. Wesley. 
"It was a miracle if the rain stopped and 
allowed him to set forward on a journey. 
It was a judgment of Heaven if a hailstorm 
burst over a town which had been deaf to 
his preaching. One day he tells us when 
he was tired and his horse fell lame, 'I 
thought, "Cannot God heal either man or 
beast by any means as without any?"— 



England of Eighteenth Century 17 

immediately my headache ceased and my 
horse's lameness in the same instant.' " 
Thomas Coke was a Christian of the same 
school. 

Therefore, behind the lad setting forth 
from his simple life to meet the strain of 
college days in an age godless and immoral, 
amid surroundings where true piety was 
rarely seen, there must be placed the guid- 
ing hand of God, who loved his Church, 
honored prayer, recognized the need of 
specially chosen leaders in every generation 
who could hold forth Heaven's ideals and 
never waver if men failed to see them. A 
good home, godly associates at the critical 
period of search for truth, and God Al- 
mighty calling and caring for him gave him 
the victory over the foibles and sins of the 
day and made him a leader unsurpassed by 
those who have followed after him. 



CHAPTER II 



IDEALS OF EDUCATION— OXFORD, 
COKESBURY 

"Dr. Coke wanted a college/' writes As- 
bury in his Journal on the receipt of the 
news of the burning of Cokesbury College 
on December, 1795. ''I wished only for 
schools. Dr. Coke wanted a college." 

The early Methodists gave it to him. No 
sooner had Thomas Coke reached America 
than he formulated a plan for our first edu- 
cational institution. "At the first interview 
of Coke with Asbury, at Barratt's Chapel/" 
says Dr. Stevens, "Asbury submitted the 
proposition to the doctor, who zealously ap- 
proved it, and procured from the Christmas 
Conference a vote that it should be imme- 
diately attempted as a collegiate establish- 
ment. Nearly five thousand dollars were 
quickly raised for the purpose." 

But there are colleges and colleges. 
There is the university where personality 
is everything, with the student at one end 
of a log and Mark Hopkins at the other, 
and the university with numberless appli- 
18 



Ideals of Education 



19 



ances and technical aids, laboratories and 
libraries, administrative buildings and dor- 
mitories furnished for the most fastidious 
taste. Between them are many humble in- 
stitutions doing good work with a varying 
conception of education or the means of 
securing it. 

In this middle class — not far removed 
from the simpler extreme — was the college 
of early American Methodism. Its curric- 
ulum was simple but its requirements were 
complex to the most minute detail. The 
Discipline for 1789 tells us the aims and 
the methods adopted — if not adapted — to 
secure them. *'Our first object shall be to 
answer the design of Christian education 
by forming the minds of the youth, through 
divine aid, to wisdom and holiness; by in- 
stilling into their tender minds the principles 
of true religion, speculative, experimental, 
and practical, and training them in the 
ancient way, that they may be rational scrip- 
tural Christians. ... It is also our particular 
desire that all who shall be educated in our 
college may be kept at the utmost distance 
as from vice in general, so in particular 
from softness and effeminacy of manners." 

One would judge from the regulations 
laid down by the Rev. Mr. Heath, the first 



20 Thomas Coke 



president, that the intent of the Church was 
carried out not only in spirit but in letter. 
^'Students were required to rise at five 
o'clock in the morning, summer and win- 
ter/' writes Dr. Stevens, ''and to be in bed 
at nine o'clock, 'without fail' ; to study seven 
hours a day, with intervals of exercise or 
recreation, three hours being given to 
dinner and its following recreations." It is 
refreshing to note in the midst of such de- 
tailed statements of the manner of life re- 
quired — details more minute even than 
those suggested in the quotation from the 
Discipline — that there is a dignity of pur- 
pose worthy the vision of more enlightened 
days. If the methods adopted seem petty, 
if not unworthy, the object leaves nothing 
to be desired. Instruction was to be in 
studies "more especially necessary for a 
new-settled country" — in those important 
arts that might "be an effectual method of 
rendering them (the students) more useful 
to their country." Patriotism and piety 
went hand in hand in the early Methodist 
Church. Though the students were forced 
to rise at five o'clock, it was for their coun- 
try's sake ! Our most modern critic of the 
tendency of college life to separate a man 
from the strenuous duties of the toilers of 



Ideals of Education 



21 



his generation might well take notice of the 
pathetic nobility of this little college of 
early Methodism. 

The explanation of much of this — its nar- 
rowness and its nobility — may be seen quite 
largely in the Oxford to which Thomas 
Coke was sent in 1763. We see Cokesbury 
if we see Oxford ; and we see Methodism of 
a thousand schools if we see the aim and 
spirit, if not the narrowness, of Cokesbury. 

Surely the explanation of the narrowness 
and asceticism so unthinkingly resented by 
most of us may be found in Oxford. The 
simple law of the pendulum controls in 
ideals of education as in almost every sphere 
of activity. To think to the limit of laxity 
to-day means to leap to the limit of prudery 
to-morrow. To see the horrors of vice in 
Oxford, means to see a little later the hor- 
rors of untempered virtue in Cokesbury, 
To begin life among youths "who think 
themselves obliged in honor and common 
civility to make you damnable drunk, and to 
carry you, as they call it, a corpse to bed" — 
to use the English and ideas of a writer of 
that day — is to end it among lads of ''tender 
minds,'' sleeping, according to college regu- 
lations deliberately advanced, **on mat- 
I tresses, not on feather beds." To see the 



22 Thomas Coke 



wild excesses of youth sunk in shameless 
animalism, means of necessity to see in 
some Kingswood school what Mr. Wesley 
tried in vain to bring about — a group of 
lads who never play. "They ought never to 
play/' says Mr. Wesley, "but they do every 
day ; yea, in the school." 

Oxford during the latter half of the 
eighteenth century was not the Oxford of 
to-day. "At no period in their history had 
the English universities sunk to a lower 
condition of education than at the time 
when Gibbon went up to Oxford," writes 
James Cotter Morison in the "English Men 
of Letters" series. Gibbon was born in 
1737, only ten years earlier than Thomas 
Coke ; came to the university at the age of 
fifteen, and entered also as a gentleman 
commoner. The conditions met by one of 
the lads were practically the same, there- 
fore, as those met by the other. "To speak 
of them as seats of learning seems like 
irony ; they were seats of nothing but coarse 
living and clownish manners. . . . Youths 
like Gray and West, fresh from Eton, ex- 
press themselves with contempt for their 
respective universities. ^Consider me,' says 
the latter writing from Christ Church, Very 
seriously. Here is a strange country in- 



Ideals of Education 23 



habited by things that call themselves Doc- 
tors and Masters of Arts, a country flowing 
with syllogisms and ale; where Horace 
and Virgil are equally unknown.' '' Gibbon 
could say the same of Magdalen, "To the 
University of Oxford," he writes, ''I ac- 
knowledge no obligation. ... I spent four- 
teen months at Magdalen College; they 
proved the most idle and unprofitable of my 
whole Hfe." 

"I doubt not you had a dunce for a tutor 
at Cambridge, and so set out wrong," writes 
Mr. Wesley to one of his preachers in a 
letter brought to light and printed for the 
first time a year or so ago. ''Did he never 
tell you that of all men living a clergyman 
should talk with the vulgar? Yea, and 
write, imitating the language of the com- 
mon people, though, so far as consists with 
purity and propriety of speech? Easiness, 
therefore, is the first, second, and third 
points, and stiffness, apparent exactness, 
artificialness of style the main defects to be 
avoided next to solecism and impropriety. 
You point wrong, Sammy. You aim at a 
wrong mark. If he was a standard for any- 
one (which I cannot possibly allow), yet 
Dr. Middleton is no standard for a 
preacher; no, not for a preacher before the 



24 Thomas Coke 



university. His diction is stiff, formal, 
affected, unnatural. The art glares, and 
therefore shocks a man of true taste. Al- 
ways to talk or write like him would be as 
absurd as always to walk in minuet step. 
O, tread natural, tread easy, only not care- 
less. Do not blunder into impropriety. If 
you will imitate, imitate Dr. Swift or Mr. 
Addison. You will then both save trouble 
and do more good." Probably Mr. Wesley 
might have said the same of instruction at 
Oxford. Neither university had a monopoly 
of dunces or men who talked and wrote as 
absurdly as the man who always walked in 
minuet step. All this must be remembered 
when we seek to find a cause for the pains- 
taking detail of some of the early Confer- 
ences or for the character of Mr. Wesley's 
conversations with his preachers. He felt 
the need of training the men who were to 
bear the message to the people that Meth- 
odism had to present. Tyerman says of Mr. 
Wesley's work in 1777, "He also spent 
an hour every morning with his London 
preachers, in instructing them as he used 
to instruct his Oxford pupils." If he did 
for them what he had been accustomed to 
do for the Oxford students, it is safe to 
say that they were well trained. Evidently, 



Ideals of Education 



25 



however, he was an exception to the rule. 
Dr. Middleton and Mr. Wesley — one in 
Cambridge, the other in Oxford— mark the 
extremes. 

This being the character of the work, it 
is hardly to be wondered at that the biog- 
rapher of Gibbon says that the lad was 
^'thrust into Oxford by a careless father." 
The same writer would undoubtedly say the 
same of the father of Thomas Coke. 

Still, if the education was poor, it was 
the best obtainable. In great sections of 
the land there was practically no education 
whatever — or none that deserved the name. 
At the end of the eighteenth century not 
one in twenty could read or write, and only 
sixty years ago three out of every ten mar- 
ried men were unable to sign their names 
to the marriage register. It was the best 
education obtainable, though painfully lack- 
I ing in the extent of subjects considered, 
} in honesty and ability on the part of the 
teacher, and in the quiet, unobtrusive, un- 
conscious guidance of the lives of the 
students — that guidance that is both a safe- 
guard and an inspiration. A satirist of the 
day blames most bitterly the dons for ''cove- 
tousness, greed, dissipation, rudeness, and 
I stupidity." *'Here and there," writes one 



26 Thomas Coke 



as if he were sounding a note of unique 
commendation, ^'here and there a tutor 
would try to do his duty by his pupil." 
Gray writes to West, ''When we meet it 
will be my greatest of pleasures to know 
what you do, what you read, and how you 
spend your time, and to tell you what I do 
not read, and how I do not, etc. ; for almost 
all the employment of my hours may 
be best explained by negatives.'' Robert 
Southey says of his Oxford days, ''All I 
learnt was a little swimming and a little 
boating. I never remember to have dreamt 
of Oxford — a sure proof of how little it 
entered into my moral being ; of school, on 
the contrary, I dream perpetually." 

Yet from Oxford there came the inspira- 
tion to young Coke that summoned him to 
nobility of aim as well as the readily ac- 
cepted suggestions of narrowness of con- 
duct. Youth sees quite largely what it 
wants to see. It is the age of divine im- 
agination. Old Sam Johnson held ever in 
most tender remembrance his pitiably poor 
and ragged days, his crude and rude ex- 
periences at Pembroke College. "Sir," said 
he, speaking once most tenderly of his col- 
lege life, "we are a nest of singing birds." 
So thought and felt John Wesley. "I love 



Ideals of Elducation 27 



the very sight of Oxford/' said he when an 
old man. So undoubtedly did Thomas Coke. 
Otherwise we cannot conceive of the cause 
of his eager desire to estabUsh a university, 
even against the advice of Francis Asbury, 
as soon as he came to the shores of 
America. 

We must remember that Thomas Coke 
was of the temperament most easily suscep- 
tible to the indefinable charms and beckon- 
ing graces of college scenes. He was 
affectionate, generous to a fault, blessed 
with a *Vein of simplicity running through 
his nature such as sometimes marks the 
highest genius.'^ He could see the beau- 
ties concealed as well as those disclosed, 
beauties that seemed the more attractive 
because concealed. He could live in a 
world of imagination as could the young 
Coleridge, who made his way one day along 
the Strand blissfully dreaming and living 
out his dream in action till rudely checked 
by one who thought he was trying to pick 
his pocket — ^blissfully dreaming that he was 
Leander swimming the Hellespont. 

Thomas Coke's varied life in later years 
shows the effect that the unseen — the land 
just ahead of him, the fertile valley just 
over the hill — always had upon him. Never 



28 Thomas Coke 



could he become aquainted with one situa- 
tion than he wanted to find another one. 
When once he knew England, he must 
know Ireland. When Ireland was his, he 
must have America. When America lay 
before him as a God-given field, he must 
cry out for India. Eighteen times did he 
cross the Atlantic, and when sixty-six years 
of age dared to set forth for an untried 
venture among unknown people thousands 
of miles from the home of his youth and 
vigorous maturity. To him Oxford must 
have meant more than a field of sordid 
sensuality and shallow instruction. He saw 
what it might be — and what soon it was ; 
he saw what it had been. He learned ever 
by contrast, not comparison. He had no 
Holy Club of associates, but found choice 
spirits among those who had lived before 
him. 

That we may know^ all that Oxford was 
to him we must not only see his temper 
and training, but also his sacrifices as a 
ceaseless itinerant. Coke was denied in 
later life close association with scholarship 
and culture. He was too busy a man, too 
much a man of the people, too pre- 
eminently a man of deeds, not to cherish 
most lovingly the golden days of dreamy 



Ideals of Education 



29 



youth. To him, as to John Wesley and to 
others who followed humbly after them, 
Oxford meant everything. 

Because of this Oxford must ever mean 
much to Methodism. It should not be for- 
gotten that Mr. Wesley surrendered to As- 
bury and Coke the control of the societies 
in America. It should not be forgotten 
that Mr. Asbury said, ''The Lord called not 
I^Ir. Whitefield nor the ^Methodists to build 
colleges. If any man should give me ten 
thousand pounds per year to do and suffer 
what I have done for that house" (Cokes- 
bur}' College) *T would not do it." It 
should not be forgotten that Thomas Coke 
offered the first prayer and preached the 
first sermon on the sacred soil of an Amer- 
ican }^Iethodist college. 

Surely, it is no little thing that Metho- 
dism had such a man sent of God to shape 
its early policy even though he was taken 
away by what to our imperfect vision seems 
an untimely death. The debt we owe old 
Oxford — the debt we owe to the Oxford 
purified by the mystical heaven-sent powers 
of youth of the dross that the historian of 
calmer days must see — that debt we can 
never pay : and that debt is our glory. 

It was not a "careless father," but a 



30 Thomas Coke 



divinely guided one, that sent out from 
Brecon, Wales, a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed, 
black-curly-haired boy to the university 
town where other lads met their ruin. It 
was the God of all wisdom who guided 
- young Coke that he might get the love for 
learning that made him next to Wesley the 
scholar of early Methodism, and enabled ; 
him to furnish an incentive to countless 
humbler men of his own and succeeding 
generations. 



CHAPTER III 



THE INFLUENCE OF GREAT MEN— 
THE LESLEYS 

To know Thomas Coke we must not only 
know the England of his day and the ex- 
tent and characteristics of his education, but 
also the men with whom he associated. We 
must know John Wesley and his gifted 
brother Charles, and have at least a speak- 
ing acquaintance with a score of others who 
belonged to the inner circle of chosen 
friends. 

More than this. We must know, if pos- 
sible, what Thomas Coke thought of them — 
or how he thought of them ; for as a rule a 
man is revealed in the opinion he holds of 
those who are nearest to him. That opinion 
need not be directly or frequently ex- 
pressed: indeed, 'tis most suggestive when 
it is not. If one keep fellowship with large 
men and fail to recognize that they are 
great, or refer to the fact if recognized, he 
belongs to one of two classes : he is pitiably 
small or as great as the men with whom he 
may be compared. It is for this reason that 
31 



32 Thomas Coke 



no man's life can be written well till long 
after he is gone. Little men fail to recog- 
nize the marks of nobility — the valet class 
is large even in a democratic age — and large 
men think the nobility of the men they meet 
a mere matter of course. 

Thomas Coke had little to say of the 
great men he knew ; this fact is immediately 
and most suggestive. Indeed, they had 
little to say of him. True, late in Hfe he 
wrote a Life of Wesley, but who knows of 
it ? Who can see in it what a smaller man 
than Coke would have been compelled to 
tell? He was a fairly prolific writer, pub- 
lishing sermons and letters and discourses 
according to the habits of his day. He 
wrote a Commentary on the Holy Scrip- 
tures in six volumes; sermons on the Di- 
vinity of Christ, the Witness of the Spirit, 
the Christian Ministry; a History of the 
West Indies in three volumes; and many 
Letters to the Societies. He wrote much, 
but did not write of that which he knew the 
most, or if he wrote did not so present the 
fact as to give a living picture of beauty 
and force. 

Not that he did not believe the Wesleys 
and their associates to be large men. Far 
from it. Wesley writes in his Journal for 



The Influence of Great Men 33 



August 13, 1776: ''I preached at Taunton, 
and afterward went with Mr. Brown to 
Kingston. Here I found a clergyman, Dn 
Coke, late gentleman commoner of Jesus 
College in Oxford, who came twenty miles 
on purpose to meet me. I had much con- 
versation with him, and a union then began 
which I trust shall never end." 

Twenty miles to meet him! Yes, and 
more than twenty miles. Thomas Coke 
went far enough that day to cross the line 
that separated ease from hardship, formal- 
ism from fervor, the dead past from the 
living present. Only a little later Mr. 
Wesley writes, 'T went to Taunton wdth Dr. 
Coke, who being dismissed from his curacy, 
has bid adieu to his honorable name and de- 
termined to cast in his lot with us." Thomas 
Coke surely believed with all the intensity 
of a great heart in John Wesley. In 1784 
he writes to him, *'If the awful event of 
your decease should happen before my re- 
moval to the w^orld of spirits, I should have 
business enough of indispensable impor- 
tance on my hands in these kingdoms." The 
possibility of the death of John Wesley was 
an *'aw^ful event" from which he shrank. 
And well he might. Few men have lived 
jwho have equaled him in ability, sincerity, 



34 Thomas Coke 



and tireless energy. Still fewer have 
brought these characteristics to situations so 
strikingly in need of them. Still fewer have 
had the power to inspire men to follow so 
closely in their steps, or to believe so tena- 
ciously the truths they proclaimed. Every 
now and then a great man appears ahead of 
his times or out of accord with his sur- 
roundings. He thinks as the wise men a 
hundred years after his day may think, or 
as wise men thousands of miles away are 
thinking. Every now and then a wise man 
fails in sincerity of purpose and men dis- 
trust him ; if once he lose his grasp on the 
confidence of the people he cannot get it 
again. Every now and then a great and 
good man seems prematurely summoned 
from the field of action. There is no 
Church nor cause that has not mourned 
bitterly at times because a leader of large 
promise has been taken. Mr. Wesley, how- 
ever, lived long and well, and few have 
equaled him in native ability or the accu- 
mulation of wisdom and knowledge. His 
Church — the Church which bears his name 
— has given to the cause of Christ large 
men, but none larger than its founder. Well 
might Thomas Coke shrink from losing 
John Wesley ! 



The Influence of Great Men 35 



Yet he said little of him. A few citations 
from many letters, a biography that was 
written twenty years after John Wesley's 
death, a funeral sermon — something, 'tis 
true, but not what one might well desire 
from a man who knew so much. The truth 
of it is, as has been said, Thomas Coke 
was too much like his great associates in 
thought, word, and deed, in aim and achieve- 
ment, to realize their full grandeur. 

He also was preeminently a man of ac- 
tion. If John Wesley could go up and down 
through three kingdoms spending and being 
spent in the Master's service, preaching 
more than forty thousand sermons during 
fifty years of tireless and unwavering loy- 
alty, traveling a quarter of a million of miles 
in the day when the best conveyance was 
the rumbling coach, proudly called for its 
rapidity a "flying machine" — if Mr. Wesley 
was always on the move, so was Dr. Coke. 
It was the day of deed, not of word. Pro- 
fession meant much, as the discussions and 
definitions of the day — the debates and 
well-nigh acrid differences of friends — 
would indicate. Profession meant much, 
but profession unaccompanied by action in 
close harmony with it was to them de- 
testable. It was a day of discipline because 



36 Thomas Coke 



it was a day of deed. It was the day of 
denial unrecognized and so unrecorded. 
Generosity, the report of which to-day 
would secure a special right of way over the 
cables that lie on the bed of the ocean, or 
through the currents of the air that modern 
thrift has at last utilized, during the days 
of the Wesleys passed unnoticed. Thomas 
Coke gave away a fortune, and no man 
thought of it. Later he came into pos- 
session of another, which he speedily gave 
away. Still, no man spoke of it. Later he 
gave away a third fortune — and some one 
was small enough to take note of it. What 
lives of these men might have been written 
if men of modern caliber had been near 
them. In 1794 the Church owed Dr. Coke 
eleven thousand dollars for an overdraft out 
of his own funds for the cause of missions 
during the previous year. He quietly can- 
celed the debt when he found it out. "It is 
doubtful," says Stevens, "whether any 
Protestant of his day contributed more from 
his own property for the spread of the 
gospel.'' 

He was ordained to the priesthood in 
1772, but his ordination was one of form 
rather than recognized grace. He accepted 
a curacy in South Petherton, Devon, and 



The Influence of Great Men 37 



at once entered upon his duties with fidelity. 
His meeting with Mr. Wesley at Taunton 
marks an epoch in his life. He returned to 
his work a new man. His vicar was startled 
by his earnestness, and in perplexity, if not 
terror, dismissed him. In 1777 he was in- 
vited by -\Ir. Wesley to join the Conference. 
From that day to the day of his death he 
was a tireless and triumphant itinerant. 
Mr. Wesley, how^ever, was not quite sure of 
him at first. ''Dr. Coke promises fair,'*' he 
writes to a friend in Brecon, ''and gives us 
reason to hope that he will bring forth not 
only blossoms, but fruit. He has hitherto 
behaved exceeding well and seems to be 
aware of his grand enemy — applause. He 
nov\^ stands on slippery ground and is in 
need of every help." Such suspicion — if 
the word is not too strong to express a 
leader's caution — so far as John Wesley 
was concerned vvas speedily dispelled. It 
was not so with Charles Wesley. ''I was 
perhaps as well acquainted with the two 
brothers as any man living," says Mr. Paw- 
son, one of the early preachers. "That Mr. 
Charles Wesley was a man of a ver>^ sus- 
picious temper is certainly true, and that 
Mr. John Wesley had far more charity in 
judging of persons in general (except the 



38 Thomas Coke 



rich and great) than his brother had is 
equally true." 

Probably 'tis unfortunate for the reputa- 
tion of Charles Wesley that he is always 
compared with his brother John. They 
w^ere alike in nobility and zeal for the king- 
dom of Christ, but they were unlike in other 
characteristics. Said John Wesley once in 
speaking of the days of their early min- 
istry, "My brother Charles would say, 
*Well, if the Lord would give me wings I 
would fly.' I used to say, 'Brother, if he 
bid me fly I would trust him for the 
wings.' " Charles also took note of the 
points of dissimilarity. "My brother," said 
he, "is all hope; I am all fear." Yet even 
so, John Wesley lived magnificently in the 
day of action, not dream; and Charles 
Wesley sang as if he never knew the mean- 
ing of doubt or discouragement. And what 
a song he sang! Who has equaled him? 
Surely, in quantity of work, no one. In 
1868 there were published thirteen volumes 
of the poetical work of John and Charles 
Wesley, very largely the work of Charles — 
nearly six thousand pages. Surely, in 
quantity, no one; and in quality too. So 
long as men know sin and strive to know 
the Saviour from sin, so long as prayer 



The Influence of Great Men 39 



seeks utterance in noble verse — great in 
thought and grand in presentation of the 
same — so long as men are burdened and 
heartbroken, so long as the Spirit of God 
summons them to worship, just so long will 
men cherish Charles Wesley's hymn, ''J^sus, 
Lover of my Soul/' a hymn admitted to be 
unsurpassed, if not unrivaled, save by the 
inspired psalms of David. 

One wonders if Dr. Coke's ambition to be 
also among the poets had anything to do 
with the reluctance of Charles Wesley to 
accord him leadership. Very likely not; 
yet he dared to dream of such a blissful 
state. One of the dusty volumes that are 
looked at to-day with curiosity commingled 
with reverence is Dr. Coke's version of the 
*'Life of Christ," a poem written by the Rev. 
Samuel Wesley, father of John and Charles. 
One reads upon the title-page concern- 
ing the poem that it was ''corrected, 
abridged, enlarged by much original mat- 
ter, and presented to the public in an al- 
most entire new dress by Thomas Coke." 
Charles might well look askance at the 
man who would dare ''correct, abridge, and 
enlarge" a poem by one of the Wesleys, 
even though he had not as yet made the 
attempt. 



40 Thomas Coke 



Dr. Coke's love for the lay preacher had 
probably much to do with this feeling. 
Having gone as far as he had — having 
hesitated not when hooted out of town, 
having gone forth deliberately into a world- 
wide parish amid the discordant clanging 
of the bells of the church where he had 
first led men in worship — it is not to be 
wondered at that he was willing to go to 
any extreme for the furtherance of his 
cause. Gladly did he hail the coming of the 
lay itinerant to the pulpit of City Road; 
though Charles Wesley bitterly resented it. 
It was not until the trustees of City Road 
waited upon Charles Wesley with the blunt 
request that he make way for gifted men 
who were unordained that he yielded. It 
was this quick recognition of the new force 
available for the public ministry of Christ 
that made Dr. Coke so heartily in sympathy 
with the most advanced views of early 
Methodism. He was a man of deeds that 
knew no precedent. 

Also he was a man of deep affection and 
great emotion. So were all of them — all 
these leaders. Their portraits call for all 
the rich colors rather than the tender and 
delicate shades that blend in two or three. 
''Wesley/' says Tyerman, *'was naturally 



The Influence of Great Men 41 



irritable, but even that was better than 
being apathetic. ^Tommy/ said Wesley 
once, ^touch that/ pointing to a dock. The 
itinerant did so. 'Do you feel anything?' 
asked Wesley. 'No/ replied his friend. 
'Touch that/ continued Wesley, pointing to 
a nettle. His companion obeyed, and in 
consequence was stung. 'Now, Tommy,' 
remarked Wesley, 'some men are like 
docks; say what you will to them, they 
are stupid and insensible. Others are like 
nettles; touch them and they resent it. 
Tommy, you are a nettle; and for my part 
I would rather have to do with a nettle 
than a dock.' " 

So would most of us. The man who 
loves much — who can love much — is the 
man who can hate heartily as well, and who 
has to struggle right royally not to do so. 
Even these differences — not to use a harsher 
word — are marks of nobility. Surely they 
are if the differences that descend to dissen- 
sions are bitterly regretted ; and in the case 
of these men they were. Human nature 
was not unknown to them through close 
contact, and their frank admissions of frailty 
were genuinely sincere. "I the chief of sin- 
ners am," said John Wesley when dying. 
He meant it just as surely as he did the next 



42 Thomas Coke 



glowing sentence— 'but Jesus died for me." 
Sincerity with the Wesleys was a cardinal 
virtue. 

It is this depth of affection that sent 
Methodism out to a sinning world with a 
song and a shout and a simple message of 
immediate salvation. Methodism walked the 
Emmaus road with Cleopas and Luke after 
the vision at the breaking of the bread. The 
Church and civilization to which it brought 
its message still moved forward into the 
lengthening shadows not knowing the 
Stranger with whom they journeyed. 
Methodism leaped to find men who were 
saying, "The Lord is risen indeed/' with a 
heart that glowed with a new-found reality. 
They were men of deepest emotion. This 
we see especially in their hymns. If 
Thomas Coke did not write them he used 
them, and, as has been said, saw nothing 
peculiar in the temper or exultant tone that 
all of them know. He loved the Lord Jesus 
Christ and exulted in the opportunity of 
saying so. He was happy when he had an 
audience of men to whom the good news 
came for the first time. He was happiest 
when that audience was made up of sinners 
sunk in depravity unspeakable who most 
needed the message of grace. The fact that 



The Influence of Great Men 43 



Coke could keep close fellowship with men 
who so thought and felt and not wonder at 
what he found, or shout to the world the 
essential facts of his discovery, is proof that 
he was gloriously like them. A little man 
would not have seen this: a large man of 
caliber and conduct like their own might 
have thought of it, but would take it as a 
matter of course. A mediocre man alone 
could see it and report it so that others 
might see it too. It was because Boswell 
was a man of moderate ability that we see 
Dr. Johnson as he was. ^vlen of the Boswell 
type could have written great lives of 
Wesley and Coke; but men of that type 
rarely concerned themselves with the self- 
denying ^Methodists. 

Yes, to know Thomas Coke we must read 
more than one biography. We must know 
what others said of him, and also w^hat he 
said of others. Better still, we must know 
what he did not say, what he evidently con- 
sidered as normal and worthy a sinner 
saved by grace. We must know a man by 
the company he keeps and by his failure to 
say anything of it. He was a great man 
among great men. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY IN THE 
ESTABLISHED CHURCH 

Dr. Coke took his Bachelor's degree at 
Oxford on February 4, 1768, when a lad 
but little more than twenty years of age. 
He returned immediately to Brecon, his 
home, and entered upon the life of a coun- 
try gentleman, well educated and with for- 
tune amply sufficient to meet both need and 
cultivated taste. He is described to us by 
Mr. J. W. Etheridge, one of his most ap- 
preciative biographers, as a man of "great 
gracefulness of form, features beautifully 
regular and lighted sometimes by a smile 
which seemed Hke a flash of sunshine, dark 
eyes radiant with vivacity, a brow white as 
alabaster and overhung with m.asses of 
black hair which descended in clustering 
curls on his shoulders.'' 

If he had any desire to remain in seclu- 
sion, taking his ease with dignity, a favored 
son in a sheltered home, a gentleman of 
leisure, his neighbors saw to it that the 
wish be not gratified. He was immediately 

44 



Elstablished Church Ministry 45 

chosen a common councilor, and within 
four years was elected to the office of chief 
magistrate of the town, an office which he 
filled with signal ability. For three years 
after this he delayed meeting the conclusion 
that he had foreseen as well-nigh inevitable 
even during the days of his doubt, if not 
disbelief, while at Oxford. From his ear- 
liest youth he had been accustomed to think 
of the possibility of his taking at last holy 
orders and entering the ministry of the 
Church. The death of two older brothers 
had left his parents ready and eager to lavish 
a w^ealth of love upon the child whom God 
gave them to take their places. Unceasing 
prayer to God arose that he might guide 
their only son to noble manhood. To the 
mother of Thomas Coke, as well as to his 
father — even more so — if there be anything 
in heredity and early training, too much 
credit cannot be given. We are told that 
he was dedicated to God, even to service 
at his altar, at an early age. The father 
lived to see him a clergy-man of the Estab- 
lished Church ; the mother lived to see him 
and to honor him as a ]\Iethodist itinerant. 

During his last days of undergraduate 
life he had turned in desperation to the 
writings of some of the great English 



46 Thomas Coke 



leaders of the Christian faith. A book by 
Bishop Sherlock on the Trial of the Wit- 
nesses and a treatise by Dr. Witherspoon on 
Regeneration were of inestimable value to 
him. *1 had the struggle to myself," writes 
one who at the same time forced his way 
through to faith, '1 was alone. I knew no 
one who believed." It is of the mercy of 
God that Thomas Coke turned to meet the 
inspiration that ever hovers, as does the halo 
round the brow of a saint, over the pages of 
a good book. Over many a book now dusty 
and neglected, young men in other days 
lingered lovingly and prayerfully as they 
sought their way to truth and God. A few 
great books have done for the leaders of the 
Christian Church what no other agency, 
save possibly a few men like themselves, 
have been permitted to do. Undoubtedly, 
he turned also to the Word of God. 'The 
divine writings are the bases and substance 
of our gospel ministry," writes he years 
later. ''We are required like the prophet to 
devour the Book which contains the law 
and the gospel." In all probability he met 
most loyally the requirement. 

He was ever an eager and most serious 
reader. In the journal of his first trip to 
America in 1784, in the record of the first 



Established Church Ministry 47 

day of the voyage, he says, ''Saint Austin's 
Meditations were this day no small blessing 
to my soul.'^ A few days later, after days 
and nights of trial amid storms that 
threatened to overwhelm them, after much 
sleeplessness and a fast unbroken for five 
days, he writes : ''This morning I was hun- 
gry and breakfasted on water gruel. I now 
began to recover my strength and employ 
myself in reading the life of Francis Xavier. 
O for a soul like his !" 

Had he the conception of the glory and 
divine commission of the Christian min- 
istry that he later emphasized, he would 
never have entered it as he did. Coke the 
curate of South Petherton was by no means 
the Coke of America. God led him step by 
step, and at times — so the young preacher 
thought — quite slowly. Sure it is that the 
views he entertained of the conditions 
requisite for entrance into the ministry 
were not held by him when he sought ordi- 
nation. "It is too commonly thought," 
writes he, "that when a young student has 
taken his degree, and shown some sign of a 
genius for learning, he is well prepared to 
enter into the service of the Church." In 
all probability such was his thought when 
he presented himself for examination for 



48 Thomas Coke 



deacon's orders at Oxford, June lo, 1770. 
Three days later he was made Master of 
Arts. Two years later, on the 23d of Au- 
gust, 1772, he was ordained to the priest- 
hood. He took out the degree of Doctor of 
Civil Laws in June, 1775. 

The passion for honesty, however, kept 
him from a merely perfunctory discharge 
of his duties. He had to be a minister of 
Christ in fact as well as name. His nature 
— his first birth, one might well say, not to 
mention the second — drove him steadily for- 
ward. 

Under the providence of God, soon after 
his entrance upon his duties as a curate he 
met Thomas Maxfield, the first lay preacher 
of Methodism. Rather should it be said, 
Maxfield met him, for it was he who made 
the advances. The report of the fervor 
and eagerness to know the truth that was 
brought to the humble itinerant showed to 
him a glorious opportunity. He took it, 
and under the guidance of God rightly used 
it, so that little by little Thomas Coke was 
led out into a larger place. ^'One evening,'' 
writes one, "while proceeding to the ap- 
pointed place, musing on the engrossing 
theme, his mind was greatly drawn out in 
prayer for the assurance of that pardoning 



Established Church Ministry 49 



love for whose voice he so intently listened. 
That same night his prayer was answered/' 
Thus at length he came to a conscious 
knowledge of sins forgiven and peace with 
God. 

The steps that followed leading him to 
cast in his lot wath the early Methodists 
were few and quite easily traceable. Books, 
if not the Book, first ; then men — large in 
heart, if not large in brain, unmistakable 
servants of the living God — next ; then, the 
world. These are the agents under God of 
leading many a man out into the glorious 
freedom of the saints and seers. These are 
the agents that led Thomas Coke over a 
long, long journey. 

His intensity in the ministry after he had 
met Mr. Maxfield led to suspicion on the 
part of those to whom he ministered. The 
priest who would pay out of his own purse 
the cost of repairs on his church and never 
ask to be reimbursed might well bear watch- 
! ing! Suspicion gave way to persecution, 
1 and persecution in time to a cruel separation 
i from the Church he loved. 

''The early Methodist preachers," said 
Charles Wesley to him at one time, "do not 
1 fully consider all the blessings of their 
1 situation, one of the greatest of which is 

i 



50 Thomas Coke 



that wall of contempt with which you are 
surrounded, which preserves you from a 
thousand temptations to which the clergy in 
general are exposed by keeping the world 
at a distance from you/' Possibly so. Pos- 
sibly the world is kept at a distance. Pos- 
sibly one may be sheltered within 'Vails of 
contempt," but none the less the hostile 
forces of the world come very near and 
dangerously ready to scale the sheltering 
barriers. After the Book, the men ; and 
after the men, the world. The world of 
sneer and scorn, of privation and persecu- 
tion, the world that hated its Saviour, hated 
his servants and failed not to show it. 

Such, however, were his English grit and 
Christian grace that he gloried in his tribu- 
lations. "If the Lord were not to manage 
our weakness, and to humble us by afflic- 
tions; if he did not strike our bodies with 
some habitual languor, to render the world 
insipid to us; if he did not prepare for us 
some losses in our substance ; if he did not 
blast some of our most favorite projects; if 
he did not place us in such situations that 
the most trying and yet unavoidable duties 
should fill our happiest hours; if he were 
not to raise up against us oppositions by 
false brethren or by true brethren ; in a 



EstabKshed Church Ministry 51 



word, if he were not to fix betwixt us and 
our weakness some kind of a barrier, which 
might be strong enough to arrest and retain 
us, we should soon be deceived by our false 
peace and prosperity; we should soon be 
without a bridle for ourselves or our desires. 
The same weakness and self-love which 
makes us so sensible of trials and afflictions 
would make us still more sensible to and 
less prepared for the dangers of pleasure 
and prosperity." Surely the man who could 
so analyze situations that the ordinary man 
either shrinks from or meets with a cow- 
ard's cry for quarter, the man who could so 
meet them and so calmly and clearly de- 
scribe what he met — surely this man is of 
the apostolic order. As one reads his 
words of exalted confidence in the God who 
makes all things work out for good, he 
seems to have before him in some modern 
version Paul's great apology for his life. 

-Dr. Coke's persecutions led him to take 
further counsel before separating himself 
absolutely from his Church. He sought the 
advice of a neighboring minister — Mr. Hull, 
a dissenting clergyman. Yet even in his 
fancied breadth he showed his pathetic nar- 
rowness and bigotry. After correspondence 
had been carried on for some time he 



52 Thomas Coke 



proposed that they meet in the home of a 
farmer, a mutual friend. At that time he 
had such Anghcan prejudices that he would 
not invite Mr. Hull to his home and dared 
not go to Mr. Hull's. ^^Had Mr. Hull been 
dying and needed the offices of devotion," 
he tells us, ''he believed he should have de- 
clined the task." A little later, God led him 
to the home of an aged man whose name is 
given by none of Dr. Coke's biographers— 
a happy Methodist who believed much and 
who lived as if he believed it. Later he was 
brought into contact with Rev. Mr. Brown, 
who brought to his attention Wesley's Ser- 
mons and Journal and the "Checks to Anti- 
nomianism" of Fletcher of Madeley. Soon 
after this he met Mr. Wesley. 

One morning, after preaching with char- 
acteristic fervor, he was met before he could 
leave his church with the message from his 
rector that his services were no longer de- 
sired, and that he was by such announce- 
ment dismissed. His enemies shouted in 
glee, the church bells were discordantly 
pealed, and Thomas Coke went out into the 
world untrammeled and unafraid. 

The study of these days gives one abun- 
dant material to insert between the lines of 
Inany a paragraph written later in life for 



Established Church Ministry 53 



the guidance of young preachers. Four 
discourses on the ''Duties of the Gospel 
Ministry," printed in 1798, give to us Dn 
Coke's conception of the work and worth 
of the minister. The very first sentence is 
suggestive: *'The ministerial office is the 
most important to the human race of any 
which is exercised on earth/' This he 
learned after much service; yet it may be 
he had the first intimation of it in the days 
when his temper was tried in the humble 
curacy of South Petherton. 
' In these discourses, based upon a portion 
of Paul's charge to Timothy (2 Tim. 4. 
1-5), three or four essentials of the Chris- 
tian ministry are suggested that in all proba- 
bility Dr. Coke learned during these days 
of his early service. Much is made of the 
fact and place of prayer. ''What success 
can our discourses produce," writes he, "if 
the habit and life and spirit of prayer draw 
not down upon them that grace, that unc- 
tion, which alone renders them useful to 
them that hear." Much is made also of the 
value of a heart set on fire with love for 
God : "Perhaps you are diffident concerning 
your gifts: but is it not a great gift to 
possess an ardent desire for the salvation 
of souls? With a heart penetrated and in- 



54 Thomas Coke 



flamed by this desire, a minister will always 
succeed: it is a substitute for all other 
talents; what shall I say, it forms them in 
him." Much is made of the place in the 
conversion of the world of godly conduct : 
^^Tht generality even of the unawakened 
part of the world live by example and 
imitation. It is true that neither the ex- 
amples nor the labors of the holiest 
preachers can have the least influence in 
the regeneration or salvation of souls with- 
out the unction of the Holy Spirit. But 
the person, the works, the actions, of a de- 
voted ambassador of Christ are all anointed 
and breathe forth the savor of his name." 

Truly, 'tis no little thing to be a minister 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, Thomas Coke 
being the witness. 



CHAPTER V 
LABORS IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND 

The discovery of Thomas Coke by 
John Wesley was most timely. In 1776 
Methodism in England had fifty-live cir- 
cuits, one hundred and fifty-five itinerant 
preachers, forty thousand members — a good 
working force and a great opportunity, yet 
few leaders. George Whitefield, the prince 
of preachers of early Methodist days, had 
gone to his reward, having died in New- 
buryport, Massachusetts, September 30, 
1 770. Charles Wesley had retired from active 
itinerant service, a bit uncertain regarding 
the wisdom of his brother's attitude toward 
the Church of England and yet unable to 
suggest a better one. John Wesley was an 
old man, apprehensive at times that his 
end was near, perplexed by problems that 
seemed to be without a precedent, deserted 
by many of his friends and well-nigh be- 
trayed by his wife. He had been "severely 
peppered and salted of late years,'' to use 
the very expressive term of the day, and 
was working under conditions, so it was 
55 



56 Thomas Coke 



said at the time, that must have made him 
'Vince Hke an eel dispossessed of his skin." 

Most surely assistance was needed, as- 
sistance in the higher councils, in the 
leadership at the front. It was equally sure 
that such assistance was difficult to be 
found. It was sure that it could not be 
found in the ranks of the itinerants. At the 
Conference of 1776 one preacher was ex- 
cluded for inefficiency and two for mis- 
behavior. All of the preachers were sub- 
jected to the most rigorous examination. 
"It is objected," writes Wesley, "that some 
of our preachers are utterly unqualified for 
their work and that others do it negligently, 
as if they had nothing to do but preach 
once or twice a day." Some one was needed 
to answer conclusively the cruel charge of 
Rowland Hill — cruel yet suggestive of the 
popular talk of the day — that Mr. Wesley 
was followed by "a ragged legion of preach- 
ing barbers, cobblers, tinkers, scavengers, 
draymen, and chimney-sweepers." Indeed, 
some one was needed to inspire them with 
normal self-respect. The repeated attack 
of foes without led at last to fears within. 
At the Conference of 1777 Mr. Wesley 
asked the question, "Have you reason to be- 
lieve from your own observation that the 



Labors in England and Ireland 57 

Methodists are a fallen people ? Is there a 
decay or an increase in the work of God 
where you have been? Are the societies 
more dead or more alive to God than they 
were some years ago ?" The answer to the 
question was quite satisfactory: ^The so- 
cieties are not dead to God; they are as 
much alive as they have been for many 
years/' The answer was all that could be 
asked for ; still the fact that such an answer 
was necessitated is most suggestive. Said 
Mr. Wesley, 'Tn most places the Metho- 
dists are still a poor despised people, labor- 
ing under reproach and many incon- 
veniences.'' The ''poor despised people'' 
needed the assistance of men with self- 
respect and the conviction that no place on 
earth could offer greater inducements than 
those found in the itinerant ministry. Most 
surely Mr. Wesley and Methodism needed 
Dr. Coke at the time when under the provi- 
dence of God he was found. 

Thomas Coke realized this, but realized 
also that he might well sit down carefully 
to count the cost before casting in his lot 
with the Methodists. He was invited to the 
Conference of 1777, but did not join till a 
! year later. He spent the time intervening 
I in travel with Mr. Wesley, studying at close 



58 Thomas Coke 



range and in all probability being just as 
keenly studied. In was of no little im- 
portance that at the Conference of 1777, 
when he received his first impression of 
Methodism as a whole, John Fletcher of 
Madeley was present. Once more God 
brought two great men together — one work- 
ing his way through to light and the other 
exulting in the high noon of sublime faith. 
*'His appearance/' says Benson, writing of 
Fletcher, ''his exhortations, and his prayers 
broke most of our hearts and filled us with 
shame and self-abasement for our little 
improvement." Wesley, aided by Fletcher, 
could outweigh any number of ''cobblers 
and tinkers.'' 

Yet it ought to be said that it was these 
humbler men, maligned and misunderstood 
by the clergy of their day, whom Coke 
quite speedily came to champion. When 
once he joined the ranks of the despised 
itinerants he gave them his love and loyalty. 
It was he who contended stoutly with 
Charles Wesley for an open pulpit at City 
Road, a pulpit where men unordained by 
the touch of men's hands but unmistakably 
called of God and set apart for service by 
the Head of the Church might preach the 
truth as God gave them to see it. 



Labors in England and Ireland 59 



The humble itinerant, however, need not 
have been as humble as he was. Education 
according to the accepted standards was 
indeed denied him, yet many of these men 
were highly educated none the less. One 
of them, the son of most humble parents, 
at the age of seventeen began life as an 
itinerant preacher. His schooling must 
have been the simplest possible, yet he en- 
tered a ministry where he made it a rule to 
read a hundred pages daily and to preach 
at least once every day for forty-five years. 
He traveled between five and six thousand 
miles annually, most of this distance on 
horseback, yet found time somewhere in the 
Vv^lds of the American forest or in the 
squalid hut of the frontiersman to learn to 
read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He re- 
ceived the munificent salary of sixty-four 
'[ dollars a year; therefore, could not have 
I purchased many books, yet worked his way 
1 through to cultured fields of thought and 
j taste. "Much of his life was spent on 
I horseback," writes Tyerman, "in extem- 
porized pulpits, or in log cabins crowded 
with talking men and noisy women, bawl- 
ing children and barking dogs— cabins 
j which he was obliged to make his offices 
' and his studies and where with benumbed 



60 Thomas Coke 



fingers, frozen ink, impracticable pens, and 
rumpled paper he had to write his sermons, ^ 
his journals, and his letters/' True, this 
man was the best of his class — Francis As- 
bury, the saint and statesman of early 
American Methodism — yet he had asso- 
ciates of similar attainments and habits of 
life. There were men like him in old Eng- 
land as well. Possibly Thomas Walsh has 
yet to come to his own — Thomas Walsh, 
said by Mr. Wesley to be the best biblical 
scholar he ever knew. 'Thomas Walsh 
(I will declare it on the housetop)," wrote 
Mr. Wesley in 1755, ''has given me all 
the satisfaction I desire and all that an 
honest man could give. I love, admire, and 
honor him; and wish that we had six 
preachers in all England of his spirit.'' His 
education was found to a large degree out- 
side the schools, for he entered active work 
at the age of nineteen; yet it was found, 
and the man who found it held it and 
cherished it as a scholar indeed. ''I never 
asked him the meaning of a Hebrew word," 
says Wesley, ''but he could tell me how 
often it occurred in the Bible and what it 
meant in each place." Thomas Walsh, 
however, died in 1759, and Francis Asbury 
was in America at the time when Mr. 



Labors in England and Ireland 61 

Wesley summoned to his help the energetic 
enthusiast from Wales. The humble itin- 
erant at times was a great man ; but just at 
the time when John Wesley found Thomas 
Coke, the best examples of his class were 
either out of reach or summoned by God to 
higher service. 

For a time after his union with the itin- 
erants he aided Mr. Wesley in his corre- 
spondence. This was no slight task, for 
Mr. Wesley held firm and undelegated con- 
trol over the most minute details of the 
work of his societies. Dr. Coke writes to 
the house steward of City Road, for ex- 
ample, sending his message at Mr. Wesley's 
suggestion, bidding him take great care of 
every shilling of the money received from 
the burial ground. He writes to another 
minute directions concerning the building 
of the chapel in Exeter: "Mr. Wesley is 
still of the opinion that the minutes of the 
Conference ought to be complied with, in 
having the seats in the middle with a rail 
running through the midst.'' 

Such a man, hov/ever, could not long be 
kept at the work of a clerk or secretary. 
Very soon he sends word to Mr. Wesley 
that he is meeting the classes and is preach- 
ing on all possible occasions. "I had a 



62 Thomas Coke 



large congregation in the home of Mr. 
Ogden, Mr. Brooke's partner, in the even- 
ing/' he says, *'and about eighty this morn- 
ing at five/' In London he received 
from the Methodists a hearty welcome. So 
many came to hear him that he was forced 
to preach out in the fields under the open 
sky. He wore his gown and cassock, yet 
adapted himself in every other particular to 
his strange surroundings. It was a long 
stride forward for the man who would not 
cross the threshold of the home of a dis- 
senting minister, there to talk of a glorious 
faith common to both, to go out into the 
fields to meet the jeers and scorn of a Lon- 
don mob. Yet gladly he went there to meet 
the most humble and uneducated of his 
hearers on a level. *'He came home to the 
apprehension of the poor," writes one, ^'by 
homely familiar phrases; and to fastidious 
ears, it may be, in a vocabulary a degree too 
vulgar." 

This eager descent to a level possibly a 
bit below that called for by the necessity 
of the case seems inconceivable to those 
who have only his printed sermons to guide 
them in their estimate of his style and 
diction. Later in life he published some of 
his sermons. From them we learn that he 



Labors in England and Ireland 63 

thought clearly, with great dignity^ and in 
most logical order. The ^'homely familiar 
phrases" of early days, to say nothing of 
the vocabulary that might offend fastidious 
taste, are not seen. If the estimate of his 
early work is a correct one, it simply em- 
phasizes the determination of the speaker 
to be all things to all men, that by all means 
he might save some. Having broken with 
the larger requirements of Church and 
school, having set at naught the teachings 
and traditions of more decorous though 
decadent days, he could well be reckless 
with matters of petty concern. 

His style, however, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances can be judged from the sermons 
that we have left us. In a sermon, for ex- 
ample, on the text, ''Watch thou in all 
things, endure afflictions, do the work of an 
evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry," 
he has six points, each boldly numbered 
and each clearly italicized. We must watch, 
he says, against the desire of worldly 
things; against the light and trifling spirit 
of the world ; against indolence ; against the 
betraying of the truth ; against a neglect and 
distaste of study; against the least aHena- 
tion of our minds from God. Each word 
of warning is accompanied by a statement 



64 Thomas Coke 



of the reasons why it is given, and no 
thought is left until it seems clearly proven. 
His thoughts came warmed with emotion. 
All through his sermons there is sponta- 
neous, unpremeditated prayer — even in the 
printed sermon, where one might well ex- 
pect to find calm thought free from per- 
sonahties of this nature. ''O God,'' he cries 
in the midst of many an argument, *^it is 
thou alone who canst support us under all 
trials ; we are weakness itself without thee.'' 
In almost every paragraph there is the 
frank and apparently unguarded disclosure 
of what he sees himself to be. ''O how he 
has broken my stubborn will, and humbled 
my proud heart, and moderated my ambi- 
tious views by afflictions," Everywhere 
there is an appeal for a holy abandon. * 'We 
lead in the histories of the martyrs," he 
says, "how weak girls could set at defiance 
all the barbarity of tyrants! how children, 
before they were able to support the labors 
of Hfe, could run with joy to meet the rigors 
of the most dreadful deaths ! how old men 
sinking already under the weight of their 
bodies, seemed by their cries of triumph to 
feel their youth renewed as that of an eagle, 
in the midst of the torment of slow martyr- 
doms ! And are you weak, my brethren ?" 



Labors in England and Ireland 65 



Clearness of thought, the glow of unfeigned 
emotion, the charm of the literary taste that 
analyzes every truth it touches and that 
presents in well-balanced phrases its varied 
conclusions, earnestness whatever the sub- 
ject, expectancy of immediate result in holy 
resolution, loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ 
— these are found in his preaching even as 
it comes to us from the printed page yellow 
and dusty through long neglect. Well may 
the portrait that greets us in the opening 
pages of his biography present him in the 
attitude of the preacher standing by the 
opened Book of God. 

Such a man could not long remain a 
humble follower. Very speedily he was 
forced to the front. 'Tis not to his dis- 
credit that he was willing to go. He had 
his ambitions: he frankly admits this to be 
I the case — but they were not unworthy and 
I they were ever obedient to his sense of duty 
and his regard for his brethren. Reckless 
I ambition would never have carried itself as 
j did the ambition of Dr. Coke in the freedom 
f of America or in the desolation of England 
I after Mr. Wesley's death. He was forced 
' to the front, and most worthily heeded the 
^1 propulsion of the Spirit of God. In seven 
l| years— from 1777 to 1784— he had ex- 



66 Thomas Coke 



hausted all the accepted conventionalities 
as well as originally discovered novelties of 
Methodist leadership that might be found 
in three kingdoms. 

One might well ask the question why Dr. 
Coke was not selected by Mr. Wesley as his 
successor. He was in the prime of life, 
forty-four years younger than his great 
leader, and well tested. Undoubtedly Mr. 
Wesley asked the same question. For years 
he had been seeking for some one to take up 
his burdens when age or disability or his 
death should necessitate a radical change in 
the control of the societies. In 1766 he 
sought to find "any one or any five men" to 
whom he might transfer his task ; and from 
1766 to the date of the Deed of Declaration 
in 1784 was ever on the lookout for a plan 
that might commend itself to the wisdom of 
all concerned. 

Possibly one reason why Thomas Coke 
did not have this opportunity was the prior 
selection of John Fletcher, of Madeley. 
In 1773 — five years before Thomas Coke 
met in Conference — Mr. Fletcher was ap- 
proached with the suggestion that he assume 
leadership when the crisis came. Said Mr. 
Wesley, in a letter that may well be quoted 
because of its portrayal of the conditions of 



Labors in Elngland and Ireland 67 

leadership: ''Who is sufficient for these 
things? QuaHfied to preside over the 
preachers and the people? He must be a 
man of faith and love, and one that has a 
single eye to the advancement of the king- 
dom of God. He must have a clear under- 
standing; a knowledge of men and things, 
particularly of the Methodist doctrine and 
discipline ; a ready utterance ; diligence and 
activity; with a tolerable share of health. 
There must be added to these, favor with 
the people, with the Methodists in general. 
/ . .He must likewise have some degree 
of learning. . . , But has God provided 
one so qualified ? Who is he ? Thou art the 
man! . . . Without conferring, there- 
fore, with flesh and blood, come and 
strengthen the hands, comfort the heart, 
and share the labors of your affectionate 
friend and brother." 

This invitation Mr. Fletcher could not 
accept. Indeed, he more than once firmly 
refused it, though conscious of the honor 
and personal esteem that prompted it. Three 
years after the first suggestion of the possi- 
bility he wrote to Mr. Wesley : 'T could, if 
you wanted a traveling assistant, accompany 
you, as my little strength would admit, in 
some of your excursions ; but your recom- 



68 Thomas Coke 



mending me to the societies as one who 
might succeed you (should the Lord call 
you hence before me) is a step to which I 
could by no means consent. It would make 
me take my horse and gallop away. Besides, 
such a step would, at this juncture, be, I 
think, peculiarly improper and would cast 
upon my vindication of your minutes such 
an odium as the Calvinists have endeavored 
to cast upon your 'Address/ It would make 
people suspect that what I have done for 
truth and conscience' sake I have done with 
a view of being what Mr. Toplady calls 
'the Bishop of Moorfields.' " 

Another reason undoubtedly was the atti- 
tude of many of the inner circle of advisers, 
whose opinions Mr. Wesley was forced to 
consider. In all probability the fear that 
Methodism would continue a society within 
the Church of England, and in no sense an 
independent body, if Mr. Wesley's ideas 
were carried out along the original lines by 
a successor chosen by him, had much to do 
with the advice given him. Says Bishop 
Tigert, stating the opinion of Dr. White- 
head, which he qualifiedly accepts: "The 
more ambitious Wesleyan leaders were not 
satisfied to be thus bound after Mr. Wesley's 
death." This unwillingness to be bound to 



Labors in England and Ireland 69 



a committee of control — the first form the 
idea assumed, a group of three men — might 
well have caused any one man to hesitate to 
take up the burden, even though he were 
of the sanguine temperament of Thomas 
Coke. 

The opportunity, however, was never 
directly granted him. By the time he came 
into close fellowship with Mr. Wesley the 
refusal of Mr. Fletcher and the opposition 
of the Wesleyan leaders had turned Mr. 
Wesley's thoughts in another direction. He 
no longer sought an individual. He was 
planning the creation of what was afterward 
known as the ''Legal Hundred.'' 

There were in 1784 three hundred and 
fifty-nine Methodist chapels in the United 
Kingdom. According to the deeds under 
which most of them were held, they were to 
be kept *'in trust for the sole use of such 
persons as might be appointed at the yearly 
Conference of the people called Methodists, 
j provided that the said persons preached no 
I other doctrines than those contained in Wes- 
! ley's Notes on the New Testament and in 
his four volumes of sermons." 

But who constituted this ''yearly Confer- 
1 ence of the people called Methodists," and 
j after Mr. Wesley's death who could deter- 

1' 

1 

1 



70 Thomas Coke 



mine as to its legality or loyalty? This was 
the all-important question. If not answered, 
and answered wisely and speedily, the life 
of the Methodist Connection would be in 
extreme peril. Dr. Coke was one of the 
first to see this danger. It was he w^ho con- 
sulted a lawyer in 1782, at the unanimous 
request of the Conference, finding out from 
him, as Tyerman says, *'that there was noth- 
ing to preserve the Methodists from being 
shivered into a thousand fragments after 
Mr. Wesley's death.'' When Mr. Wesley 
had the case clearly presented to him he 
agreed that such was the condition. * With- 
out some authentic deed fixing the meaning 
of the term, the moment I died the Confer- 
ence had been nothing," he writes. *'There- 
fore any of the proprietors of the land on 
which our preaching houses were built 
might have seized them for their own use, 
and there would have been none to hinder 
them, for the Conference would have been 
nobody, a mere empty name." 

When Dr. Coke reported this opinion to 
the Conference in 1783, he was appointed to 
draw up some plan whereby the difficulty 
could be met. With the aid of two lawyers, 
Mr. Maddox and Mr. Clulow, he drew up 
the famous Deed of Declaration. This deed 



Labors in England and Ireland 71 



was then submitted to Mr. Wesley, who ap- 
proved it with one important alteration. 
Dr. Coke believed that all the preachers in 
full connection should be included in the 
legal Conference. Mr. Wesley believed 
that a much smaller number would be better. 
At first he desired no more than ten or 
twelve. He finally consented to name one 
hundred, leaving ninety-two of the preach- 
ers out of the chosen list. ''Some of the 
oldest and ablest preachers in the Connection 
were excluded," writes John Hampson, Jr., 
one of the men shut out. *'Many of the 
selected members were not only deficient in 
abilities, but some of them, at the time of 
their insertion in the deed, were only upon 
trial ; while the chief qualifications of others 
were ignorance, fanaticism, and ductility." 

The inevitable result followed. Thirty of 
the ninety men not chosen left the Connec- 
tion, and Methodism staggered under the 
blow given her by the drastic hand of her 
leader. Whether the plan was the best or 
not no man can say. Dr. Coke, however, 
would have had it otherwise. He who might 
have planned for absolute authority for him- 
self, according to the precedent set by John 
Wesley, who might have succeeded in ac- 
complishing his object had such plan been 



72 Thomas Coke 



adopted, or at least in securing greater per- 
sonal recognition than came to him for 
years, with rare wisdom planned and pleaded 
for a Methodism of the broadest democracy. 
It was not for some years after Mr. Wesley's 
death that Dr. Coke was elected to the presi- 
dency of the Conference. Indeed, the men 
most closely in touch with Mr. Wesley were 
passed by at first — Mr. ^Mather, for examiple, 
whom Wesley fully trusted, whom he had 
once ordained to act as superintendent in 
England. Dr. Coke, however, was elected 
secretary at the first Conference. This posi- 
tion he held for many years. He was ready 
to serve or ready to lead. If leadership 
could be granted him by the choice of his 
brethren, well and good; if not, leadership 
might come from other sources. He was 
not limited to conventional methods or 
recognized sources of power. He could 
lead and could select for himself, if neces- 
sary, his plan of campaign. He was ready 
to show enthusiastic obedience or equally 
enthusiastic originality. He needed the elec- 
tion of no body of associates to make him 
great. 

His work in England was followed 
speedily by more pronounced service in 
Ireland. In 1782 Mr. Wesley sent him 



Labors in England and Ireland 73 

across the channel to take charge of the 
Irish societies. He was commissioned to 
give to the Irish ministry all the independ- 
ence of EngHsh guidance that seemed to 
him to be possible, and to guide them in 
their deliberations as their first president. 
This he did, and did so well that he held 
the position of leadership in Ireland, fre- 
quently serving as president, for thirty 
years, his last Conference being in the 
year 1813. In 1805 the Irish preachers 
requested his reappointment as president 
for the next year with these words: 
*'Our love and respect for him increase 
every year, so that we were ready to 
look upon ourselves as orphans when n- 
trary winds delayed his coming so long." 
Under his leadership Methodism in Ireland 
steadily grew. In 1782 there were fifteen 
circuits, thirty-four preachers, and six thou- 
I sand members. In 181 3 there were fifty- 
! six circuits, one hundred and twenty-one 
preachers, and twenty-eight thousand mem- 
bers. Indeed, so surely and steadily did 
Methodism in Ireland advance under his 
I leadership that he might well be remem- 
I bered primarily for the work done there, 
it Surely he would thus be remembered if we 
'j were to judge by the quantity of labor ex- 

1 



74 Thomas Coke 



pended or results realized, rather than by 
the quality of his work in original fields of 
activity at most important periods in the 
Hfe of our Church. Ireland is remembered ; 
but before we get fairly settled in our opin- 
ion as to its supreme worth we think of 
America. America is fairly remembered, 
but even America gives way to the lands 
of darkest heathenism whose cry for help 
he alone seemed to hear. Still, one must 
read the story of his labors in Ireland if 
he would see how the servant of God whom 
we would honor used his energies and tal- 
ents for the spread of Christ's kingdom. 

One might well ask at this time a ques- 
tion or two regarding what we call the 
home life of these leaders. As is well 
known, Mr. Wesley was most unhappily 
married. Tyerman says of Mrs. Wesley, 
''She was originally a not too respectable 
servant girl; a faithless woman who em- 
phasized her perfidy and meanness in in- 
juring the man whom at the altar of God 
she had sworn to love, honor, and obey." 
Francis Asbury remained a bachelor to the 
end of his days. He did not think it pos- 
sible, so he said, to find a woman who had 
grace enough to live but one week in fifty- 
two with her husband, so he did not seek to 



Labors m England and Ireland 75 



find one nor venture ahead into matrimony 
as if he had fomid. Charles Wesley had a 
happy home, having a loving wife and chil- 
dren. Dr. Coke for fifty-eight years re- 
mained single, then within a few years mar- 
ried twice. Romance, however — or ro- 
mance as we use the term when we think of 
the love affairs of the great as well as the 
humble — had little to do with his selection 
of a helpmeet. His work, God's work, was 
ever uppermost in his thought. One day in 
Bristol he made an appeal for missions 
and received a subscription from a wealthy 
maiden lady of the sum of one hundred 
guineas. When he called to collect the sum 
promised she made the gift two hundred. 
Such generosity overwhelmed him. It was 
too much like his own. He married her 
only a few weeks later. Six years after this 
i she died, a woman most highly respected, 
I famous for her good deeds and hearty sup- 
! port of her husband. Dr. Coke within a 
short period married a second time. This 
marriage also was of short duration, for his 
I, wife died within a year. 

Home, in the true sense of the word, 
few of these men knew. Not only they had 
!l "no cottage in the wilderness,'' as they were 
1 wont to say in song, but no resting place 



76 Thomas Coke 



in the cottage of anyone else. They were 
ever on the move. It could be said of John 
Wesley, Thomas Coke, and countless others 
— of Francis Asbury especially — that not 
only v^as the world their parish, but the 
world was their home. After seventeen 
years of service in the Methodist ministry 
Dr. Coke wrote to an old school fellow, 
saying that he had not known during all 
this time what it was to have an hour to 
spare, or to have a day long enough in 
which to accomplish all that he thought 
should be done. Men like this know little 
of home life. 

'Tis such a man whom John Wesley in 
1784 determined to send to meet the hard- 
ships of America. 



CHAPTER VI 



ON THE ATLANTIC 

''I ESTEEM my little chamber a peculiar 
gift of God/' writes Dr. Coke in his Jour- 
nal of one of his trips across the Atlantic. 
'It is taken out of the steerage, and is so 
far, on the one hand, from the common 
sailors, and, on the other, from the cabin 
passengers, that all is still and quiet, and 
here I can be with God. Blessed be his 
name, he does make it my sanctum, sanc- 
torum, tilling it, my soul at least, with light 
and glory/' 

In such a place, where ''the soul at least" 
was supremely content — the suggestion of 
an exception fully explained by a frank 
record here and there of seasickness- 
Thomas Coke spent many a long day. 

Eighteen times he crossed the Atlantic, 
nine times out from home and nine times 
back again ; eighteen times in the day when 
an ocean voyage consumed seven or ^ight 
tim.es as long as one does now% and w^hen 
discomforts and dangers were either hourly 
met or hourly anticipated. ''We have a 
77 



78 Thomas Coke 



Jonah on board, that's plain enough/' 
growled a sailor once at the height of a 
storm, making his way to the cabin of Dr. 
Coke and rudely forcing an entrance into 
the preacher's sanctum sanctorum; *'we 
have a Jonah on board." And as he said 
it he seized books and papers and threw 
them overboard. The itinerant bishop 
barely escaped going overboard after them. 
*'The various means they employed," writes 
he of the captain and crew with whom once 
he sailed, ^'the means employed to make my 
voyage painful, are not easily to be de- 
scribed. Common delicacy, indeed, would 
prevent me from relating their conduct. . . . 
The cruel usage I received brought on a fit 
of illness which confined me to my bed 
three days. O how I was weaned from the 
world and all its folHes!" 

Discomfort was paralleled by positive 
danger. Fierce storms on the wild Atlantic 
seemed to await his coming. ^'At ten at 
night," writes he in the Journal of his 
second voyage, ''I heard the captain's wife 
crying out in the most dreadful fright ; and 
presently one of the passengers came run- 
ning, exclaiming, Tray for us. Doctor: for 
we are just gone!' I came out and found 
that the ship was on her beam ends. They 



On the Atlantic 79 



were just going to cut away the mainmast.'' 
Dr. Coke adds the statement that one of his 
party led in prayer, and then says, ''It was 
not till after this, and we had sung a hymn 
together, that the foresail was shivered, and 
by that means the masts were saved, and 
probably the ship itself.'' 

To the dangers of the deep were added 
the terrors of war. On his seventh voyage 
his ship was captured by a French privateer 
and taken as a prize to the West Indies. 
Dr. Coke was permitted to make his way 
back to the United States as best he could, 
stripped of all his personal property except 
the books and papers which were to him 
ever priceless. 

Notwithstanding all this — discomfort, 
danger, insult, and positive abuse — he 
hailed the opportunity to cross the sea 
whenever it was offered him. On the broad 
Atlantic, in the little room that he called the 
''peculiar gift of God," he had the privilege 
granted him. and given to him nowhere else, 
to read, to study, and to write; and Thomas 
Coke, though an itinerant of itinerants, w^as 
ever a scholar. ^Methodism miight well be 
jealous of the term ''Oxford Movement" : it 
was hers by right of possession, if not di- 
vine appointment, long before the days of 



80 Thomas Coke 



Newman and Pusey. In the cabin of these 
humble Httle vessels that carried a few of 
the coals of Methodist fire from old Eng- 
land to young America was the best that 
Oxford could give for the advancement of 
the Redeemer's kingdom. '^My books, my 
papers, and above all my fellowship with 
God," writes Dr. Coke, "have made the 
whole way agreeable." 

Yet it was not for the delight of literature 
alone that he turned to his books. Every- 
thing was subservient to the one purpose. 
He never forgot his call and his commis- 
sion. Even his study and his hours of com- 
parative ease were haunted — if such a term 
is not too sinister — by the vision of the 
duty just ahead of him, and were adapted 
to meet it when it came. He studied much, 
yet studied that he might give his conclu- 
sions to the next group of eager itinerants 
he might meet. He wrote and read, yet 
wrote and read for the rank and file of his 
societies who did neither, or for the humble 
preachers who might be prevailed upon to 
read such books as their leaders selected 
for them. Among other tasks assigned him 
by the Conference was the writing of a 
Commentary on the Bible. The assignment 
he obediently and loyally accepted and 



On the Atlantic 81 



hurried to fulfill in the little cabin of a 
tossing vessel on the wild waste of the broad 
Atlantic. Tis safe to say that -Methodism 
did more serious study through the 
scholarly toil of its early missionaries on 
the surface of the sea than many a Church 
in calmer days has done in the classic shad- 
ows of the great libraries. 

Yet he needed no classic shadows to give 
him inspiration. ''I find a ship a most con- 
venient place for study," writes he, ''though 
it is sometimes a great exercise for my feet, 
legs, and amis to keep myself steady to 
write. Fromi the time I rise till bedtime, 
except during meals, I have the cabin table 
to myself and work at it incessantly.'' 

When his study was not for some specific 
and immediate purpose he turned instinct- 
ively to books of devotion and to the 
classics. Of his first voyage he writes : 
^'September i8th. — Saint Austin's ]\Iedita- 
tions were made this day no small blessing 
to my soul. Saturday, October 2nd. — 
Reading Mrgil. I can say in a much better 
sense than he, 

Deus nobis hxc otia fecit, 

Namque erit ille mihi semper Deus. 

^Monday, 4th. — Finished the life of David 
Brainerd. The most surprising circum- 



82 Thomas Coke 



stance in the whole, I think, is that the great 
work which by the blessing of God he 
wrought among the Indians was all done 
through the medium of an interpreter. 
Tuesday, sth. — I have just finished The 
Confessional,' and believe the author does 
not speak without reason in his observations 
concerning national Churches, that the 
kingdom of Christ is not of this world ; 
that in proportion to the degrees of union 
which subsist between the Church and 
State, religion is liable to be secularized, 
and made the tool of sinister and ambitious 
men. Monday, i8th. — I have waded 
through Bishop Hoadley's Treatises on 
Conformity and Episcopacy — 566 pages. 
He is a powerful reasoner, but is, I believe, 
wrong in his premises. Thursday. — I fin- 
ished the Pastorals of Virgil, which, not- 
withstanding their many exceptionable pas- 
sages, by a kind of magic power conveyed 
me to fields and groves and purling brooks, 
and painted before my eyes all the beauties 
of Arcadia, and would have almost per- 
suaded m.e that it is possible to be happy 
without God. However, they served now 
and then to unbend the mind.'' 

To do all this work one might well need 
to be "sea proof," as Dr. Coke said that at 



On the Atlantic 83 



last he found himself to be. ''Sometimes 
for a little variety/' he writes in the journal 
of a later voyage, "I read Virgil, and every 
day a canto of Spenser, the English Virgil. 
I am astonished the writings of Spenser are 
not more read. His genius and imagination 
were amazing, and from his allegories may 
be extracted some of the most instructive 
lessons of religion. I grudge not the 
twenty shillings I gave for his works. With 
such company I think I could live comfor- 
tably in a tub." 

What a comment on the scholarship and 
unwavering zeal of these men of one idea, 
men who had determined in some solemn 
I moment of blessed experience to know only 
Jesus Christ and him crucified, these pages 
from this old Journal everywhere give to 
us! To ''unbend'' their minds, they read 
the Pastorals of Virgil; to get ready for 
the strange tribes of unknown red men 
whom they may possibly meet they read 
I the lives of such heroes as David Brainerd ; 
when they — or those whom Dr. Coke repre- 
sents — desire a quotable sentence in which 
to express their sense of divine guidance 
and their undying loyalty to God, they find 
it and give it in the Latin, which some of 
their more boastful followers can barely 



84 Thomas Coke 



translate. What a contrast to the Hst that 
many an itinerant of to-day would make is 
this catalogue of works of serious thought 
in stately prose and poetry ! 

Possibly the poetry of Virgil was read be- 
cause the reader had the soul of a poet. 
One seeks in vain to find any original verse 
written by Dr. Coke, but does not seek in 
vain to find that he might have written 
had he cared to introduce his thoughts to 
rhyme and rhythm. At least he had the 
heart and soul of a poet if not the mental 
agility ; the mind of a poet if not the melody. 

went on deck about half an hour before 
sunrise," he writes, "and saw the most 
glorious sight I ever beheld except once on 
my former voyage. The eastern sky was 
covered with a most beautiful canopy of 
purple, all over decorated with spangles of 
gold. The heavens did indeed declare the 
glory of God." Once when approaching 
the shores of Ireland he writes : '^No pencil 
can express their beauty. . . . Sloping hills, 
perpendicular rocks, turrets seated on emi- 
nences, and here and there an opening glade 
or lawn ; sometimes even a town or village. 
They who are not acquainted with the seas 
have no conception of the pleasure it gave, 
especially as my mind was enabled to ascend 



On the Atlantic 85 



to the celestial Painter whose glorious work 
was so visibly before me. 'But they were 
mere clouds/ says the phlegmatic scorner. 
And what is the work of a Raphael but 
canvas and paint?" He is an artist and a 
poet in intention or in his aspirations if not 
in deed and attainment. But even the 
artist is at the best but a good second to the 
preacher. After his exultant note of appre- 
ciation of what he sees in the clouds above 
the Irish coast he cries out, ''All is cloud 
and vapor without the enjoyment of God." 
With some such sentence does he end every 
bit of description. "We had this evening a 
most beautiful sunset," writes he in the 
journal of his fifth voyage. "A great cloud, 
like a mountain of flaming fire, stood ap- 
parently above and upon the sun. Just 
above this cloudy mountain of fire was a 
smaller one equally splendid, exactly in the 
shape of a crown ; and the horizon to the 
right and left seemed all on fire. . . . We 
can view God in all things." 

Surely John Wesley chose wisely. Meth- 
odism in the new country whither Mr. 
Wesley was sending it needed the infusion 
: of the gracious gentility that Dr. Coke gave 
I it. Fiery fervor was not lacking. Evan- 
I gelistic zeal went singing and shouting its 



86 Thomas Coke 



happy message up and down the Atlantic 
coast. Asbury, grim and great, stern to- 
ward himself and therefore stern toward 
his preachers, was setting an example that 
few men were rugged enough to follow. 
*Will other bishops ride from five to six 
thousand miles in nine months for eighty 
dollars a year?" asks Francis Asbury in a 
defense of his rights as a bishop and in an 
inevitable contrast between his activity and 
the inactivity of bishops of other Churches. 
^Will they make arrangements for seven 
hundred preachers and ordain one hundred 
men annually, ride through all kinds of 
weather and roads at our time of life, the 
one fifty-six and the other sixty-nine years 
of age?" With such a leader, that fanati- 
cism or asceticism on the part of lesser men 
might not result, there must go such a man 
as Thomas Coke. With him there was no 
less fervor ; but there were more fields than 
one known to him from which to gather ma- 
terial for his sacred fire. That Methodism 
might be the religion of all classes, that it 
might keep those whom it found after pros- 
perity had come to them, such a leader as 
Dr. Coke was needed. 

And Dr. Coke needed Methodism. He 
was too vigorous and generous a man to 



On the Atlantic 87 



have remained content without large work, 
and work that could ever command his ex- 
treme energy. Southey says of him, ^'His 
Welsh blood was soon up." His temper 
was quick and hot and his emotions deep 
and abiding. Said he at one time to a man 
who offered him five hundred pounds a year 
to stay in Antigua, where he was having 
most remarkable success, ''God be praised, 
five hundred thousand a year would be to 
me a feather, w^hen opposed to my useful- 
ness in the Church of Christ." If Thomas 
Coke was the gift of God to American 
Methodism, Methodism w^as the gift of God 
to him. Indeed, he and others like him 
belong to that strange class of men who 
perplex us ever in our distinction between 
cause and result. Whether Thomas Coke 
was the cause, under God, of the great work 
that was carried along with him wherever 
he went, or whether he was the result of 
that work — made great through it — no man 
can say. In all probability he was both 
cause and result. As he said of the sunset 
scene off the shores of England, so we can 
say, "We can see God in all things." 



CHAPTER VII 



LABORS IN AMERICA 

In 1784, when Thomas Coke, bearing 
high credentials from John Wesley, first 
came to America, he met a most peculiar 
condition of things in the Church of his 
youth and early ministry. In the new Re- 
public there was of necessity no longer any 
vestige of the Church of England. 'The 
English government has no authority either 
civil or ecclesiastical,'' writes Mr. Wesley 
in a famous letter to ''Dr. Coke, Mr. As- 
bury, and the Brethren in North America,'' 
''any more than over the States of Holland. 
A civil authority is exercised over them 
partly by Congress, partly by the Provincial 
Assemblies. But no one either exercises or 
claims any ecclesiastical authority at all." 
With the hauling down of the English flag 
and the sailing away of the English armies, 
with the surrender of all claim to control in 
affairs of state on the part of the mother 
country, the Church of England in America 
absolutely ceased to be. 

Not that there were no churches in 
88 



Labors in America 89 



America — no churches of the Anghcan 
Episcopal form of faith and conduct. 
There were such churches, though there 
were not many. In Virginia, for example, 
where the Church had been relatively 
strong, there were only twenty-eight clergy- 
men — twenty-eight instead of ninety-one, 
the number holding positions at the out- 
break of the war. These twenty-eight men 
had the supervision of what remained of the 
work and worship carried on a little while 
before in one hundred and sixty-four 
churches and chapels. Ninety-five parishes 
had been forsaken; thirty-four were ex- 
istent only in name, never being visited by 
a clergyman. Elsewhere it was no better. 
In the middle and Eastern Colonies even 
before the war there were only eighty Epis- 
copal ministers. 

All this, however, could have been en- 
dured and at last overcome had there been 
any leadership or central authority. Indeed, 
the ability of the clerg}TOen who stepped to 
the front and organized the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church should receive our respect if 
not admiration. In America there was no 
bishop, and for sixty years had been none. 
The spirit of colonial America was against 
all such authority. Puritanism, with its 



90 Thomas Coke 



large principles and petty prejudices, its 
memories and its suspicions, withstood bit- 
terly every priest, large or little, from Rome 
or from England. "What a wonderful 
change,'' writes Bishop White in 1836, "has 
the author lived to witness in reference to 
American Episcopacy! He remembers the 
ante-revolutionary times when the presses 
profusely emitted pamphlets and newspaper 
disquisitions on the question whether an 
American bishop were to be endured; and 
when threats were thrown out of throwing 
such a person, if sent among us, into the 
river." This sentiment and threatened op- 
position in America was appreciated to the 
limit in England and implicitly obeyed. 
Affairs in America were largely controlled 
by the diocese of London. Apparently Eng- 
land was as loath to give the semblance of 
independence to the Church in the Colonies 
as it was to give independence to the state. 

Popularity also was lacking — ^popularity 
as well as positive power. The common 
people distrusted the Church of England — 
feared it as if it were the center of treach- 
erous priestcraft and tyranny. The gov- 
ernment of colonial days also feared it. In 
1722, when there were two bishops in 
America — Dr. Welton and Dr. Talbot — one 



Labors in America 91 



in Philadelphia and the other in Burlington, 
New Jersey, the government of the two 
colonies forbade all exercise of episcopal 
authority. Even under the new govern- 
ment people felt largely the same. They 
could not forget that during the dark days 
of the Revolution the clergy of the Church 
of England stood for the king or jfled across 
the seas to seek his protection; not all of 
them, 'tis true, but the large proportion of 
them. So was it, let us say in all fairness, 
with the itinerants sent over by Mr. Wesley 
from England. Mr. Asbury alone stood for 
the cause of the Colonies. The ordination 
vows of the clergy made them loyal to the 
throne as well as to the Church, and, it may 
be, their sense of dependence on the sup- 
port granted them by the mother country. 

For not only did the Church lose power 
and popularity during the days of our Revo- 
lution, but property as well. In Virginia, 
for example, all the landed endowments of 
the Church of England were lost. In the 
Middle and Eastern States the clergy were 
refused all support from home after the 
recognition of the independence of the 
Colonies. 

It was a Church that was poor, therefore, 
as well as unpopular and powerless, that 



92 Thomas Coke 



Mr. Wesley had to think of when he con- 
sidered the relation of his distant societies 
to the Church he loved. 

But this was not all. Two agencies 
were at work, one on the part of the Church 
and one on the part of the societies. The 
Church seemed to be moving toward a 
Presbyterian form of government. In 1782 
Dr. White issued a pamphlet entitled *'The 
Case of the Episcopal Churches in the 
United States Considered." In this pam- 
phlet he advocated the formation of a new 
organization without bishops, a step seri- 
ously considered but afterward found un- 
necessary. Such a plan, even as a possi- 
bility, even as a last resort, was most sug- 
gestive of the general unrest and radical 
spirit of the day. Something of this Mr. 
Wesley must have known, for the pamphlet 
was published two years before Dr. Coke 
set sail for America, and in the day when 
Mr. Wesley was seeking from all sources 
information regarding affairs in the Colo- 
nies. 

In the societies independence was almost 
achieved. At the Conference, now recog- 
nized as the "regular" Conference, held in 
1779 — the Fluvanna Conference in Virginia 
— ^by formal vote four of the preachers were 



Labors in America 93 



authorized to administer the sacraments. 
Formal ordination, such as the Church of 
their fathers had insisted upon, these men 
brushed aside as unnecessary. A commit- 
tee was created and constituted as a ''pres- 
bytery." Its members were empowered, 
''first, to administer the ordinances them- 
selves; second, to authorize any other 
preacher or preachers, approved by them, 
by the laying on of hands." The commit- 
tee accepted these powers and privileges of 
leadership, and quite rightfully. Asbury 
years before had been superseded by 
Thomas Rankin. Indeed, Asbury had been 
formally recalled by Wesley, though provi- 
dentially the letter of recall did not reach 
him in time to be of effect. Rankin, after 
he had held the position of high responsi- 
bility for a little time, at the outbreak of the 
war fled to England, whence he never re- 
turned. 

For years American Methodism had no 
official leadership — or none that formal 
vote or appointment according to estab- 
lished and unassailable authority had cre- 
ated. "We have seen," writes Bishop 
Tigert, "how Mr. Asbury was first recog- 
nized as general assistant by the irregular 
Delaware Conference of 1779, after the 



94 Thomas Coke 



retirement of Mr. Rankin and the other 
English preachers and after William Wat- 
ters had presided at the Conference of 1778. 
After the reunion of the Northern and 
Southern Conferences he was again unani- 
mously chosen in 1782 to 'preside over the 
American Conferences and the whole work,' 
it being added, however, that this was 'ac- 
cording to Mr. Wesley's original appoint- 
ment. . . . During the Revolutionary War 
Mr. Wesley's control of the Americans had 
been cut off, and thus Asbury's leadership 
had become thoroughly established on the 
basis of the unanimous consent of the 
preachers." This commission, therefore, or 
the Conference that created it, had suffi- 
cient precedent for its action. 

Independence, therefore, was in the blood, 
may want all the influence in America 
which you can throw into my scale," writes 
Dr. Coke to John Wesley, August 9, 1784. 
*'Mr. Brackenbury informed me at Leeds 
that he saw a letter from Mr. Asbury in 
which he said that he would not receive any 
person deputed by you with any part of the 
superintendency of the work invested in 
him; or words which evidently implied so 
much." Independence was so clearly recog- 
nized that Mr. Asbury, in the report of his 



Labors in America 95 



first interview with Dr. Coke, speaks of the 
''Independent Episcopal Church/' 

''The preachers north of Virginia/' how- 
ever, to quote the words of Jesse Lee, "were 
opposed to the step so hastily taken by the 
brethren in the South. . . . There was great 
cause to fear a division, and both parties 
trembled for the ark of God. . . . There was 
little room to hope that they would ever 
recede from their new plan, in w^hich they 
were so well established. But, after all, 
they consented, for the sake of peace and 
the union of the body of Methodists, to 
drop the ordinances for a season, till Mr. 
Wesley could be consulted.'' 

Everything, therefore, led Mr. Wesley 
and Dr. Coke to the conclusion they reached 
regarding the status of the scattered so- 
cieties in America. They were confronted 
by conditions that were unique; they were 
dealing with men who had tasted the de- 
lights of freedom and who were simply 
waiting through courtesy rather than loy- 
alty advices from the old home; they were 
unable to offer to their societies, with any 
certainty, a Church to which they might go ; 
the next report from across the sea might 
reveal to them that Presbyterianism had 
taken the place of Episcopacy. Further, 



96 Thomas Coke 

they were assured of their remarkable 
growth even under such adverse conditions, 
and equally well assured that no action of 
their own could retard continued growth; 
they may have recognized that little action 
on their part was needed to further it. The 
societies were like lusty sons far from 
home, fully able to take care of themselves, 
waiting to hear what their parents might 
suggest, yet fully persuaded that they could 
get along without their help if they thought- 
lessly sought to thwart what seemed to 
them their destiny. "I have accordingly 
appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis As- 
bury to be joint superintendents over our 
brethren in North America,'' writes Mr. 
Wesley. He then adds the very suggestive 
sentence, *lf any one will point out a more 
rational and scriptural way of feeding and 
guiding the poor sheep in the wilderness, 
I will gladly embrace it." 

Very likely he meant exactly what he 
said. Very likely Mr. Wesley would have 
most gladly seen his way clear to take some 
other step than the one which he took. He 
was never eager to break with established 
customs. He never forced his way out of 
the Church, and rarely took without great 
deliberation the suggestion of an open door 



Labors in America 97 



and a beckoning opportunity. He dragged 
unwilling steps toward anything that 
seemed to him irregular or novel. He was 
a conservative doing the w^ork of a radical. 
He never took a step forward until he had 
proven to himself by the most convincing 
argument that he had no right to remain 
where he was. 

Thomas Coke, on the other hand, Vv'as 
of a different temper. He w^ould leap and 
hunt for reasons afterward to justify the 
leap. In the great affairs of life his judg- 
mient took counsel with caution, but in the 
large spaces w^here common principles ruled 
he roamed readily at will. Had there been, 
then, no Revolution in America, no sever- 
ance of the Church of England with Epis- 
copacy in the North American Colonies, no 
Fluvanna Conference with its intim.ations of 
what might be done and its successful ex- 
periment of independency though only for 
a brief season, the Methodist Episcopal 
Church would never have been established. 
More than this, had a man of less daring 
and less readiness to sympathize w^ith new 
and unprecedented situations than Thomas 
Coke been sent the story of the famous 
Christmas Conference in 1784 would be 
radically unlike what it is. ''Coke's con- 



98 Thomas Coke 



duct at this juncture and after his ar- 
rival in America/' writes Bishop Tigert, 
"when Mr. Dickins advised him to carry 
out his mission on Mr. Wesley's authority 
without consulting Mr. Asbury, must win 
our admiration for its obvious delicacy and 
nice sense of propriety." 

It was of the providence of God that 
Thomas Rankin was recalled from his po- 
sition as general assistant, that Mr. Wesley 
himself was too old to come, that Thomas 
Coke was the man selected, and that Francis 
Asbury took the stand he did. 

From two sources Dr. Coke received his 
power : Mr. Wesley and the Methodist itin- 
erants in Baltimore. 

In February, 1784, a year ever to be re- 
membered in Methodism, Mr. Wesley first 
consulted with Dr. Coke concerning the 
critical step about to be taken. "He stated 
to him," so writes Mr. Drew, who knew 
Thomas Coke well, "that he had much ad- 
mired the mode of ordaining bishops whicK 
the Church of Alexandria had practiced" 
(an ordination by the presbyters of one of 
their own body on the decease of a bishop), 
"and that, being a presbyter himself, he 
wished Dr. Coke to accept such ordination 
at his hands, and to proceed in that char- 



Labors in America 



99 



acter to the continent of America to super- 
intend the societies oi the United States.'' 

Dr. Coke hesitated — for the step was a 
most radical one, radical even for him — 
and asked for time that he might consider 
what should be done. After two months' 
study he came to the conclusion that ^Ir, 
Wesley's position was a wise one, and 
heartily yielded to his request. In Septem- 
ber he accepted ordination at the hands of 
Mr. Wesley, assisted by Air. Creighton, a 
presbyter in charge of the City Road Chapel. 
At the same tim.e Whatcoat and Vasey, two 
of the preachers, were ordained, first as 
deacons, then as elders, and commissioned 
to go with Dr. Coke to America. 

From Mr. Wesley, then. Dr. Coke re- 
ceived his ordination ; but from his brethren 
in America he received the power that made 
that ordination of value. The intinerants 
in America, with the memory of their ex- 
periment in Fluvanna and the knowledge 
that there were leaders among them large in 
thought and faith, could have gotten along 
without the formality of the ordination at 
the hands of Mr. Wesley; so could Dr. 
Coke, and so in all probability he would 
have done had he come in contact with the 
new life of American independence sooner 



100 Thomas Coke 



than he did. The Wesleyan ordination was 
important; but the Christmas Conference 
election far more important, and the wisdom 
with which Dr. Coke received it. 

It is possibly of interest — Dr. Stevens 
seems to think it to be so — that the first 
minister to meet Dr. Coke on his arrival in 
America was John Dickins, preacher in 
charge in New York city. To him Dr. Coke 
outlined the plan he had brought with him. 
^'Dickins, being one of the Fluvanna breth- 
ren," so says Dr. Stevens, "emphatically ap- 
proved it. . . . Coke deemed it expedient to 
disclose it no further till he could consult 
Asbury." 

Asbury at first was astounded at the 
proposition. Said he : "I was shocked when 
first informed of the intention of these my 
brethren in coming to this country. It may 
be of God. My answer then was, if the 
preachers unanimously choose me; I shall 
not act in the capacity I have hitherto done 
by Mr. Wesley's appointment." 

At the ''Christmas Conference," in Lovely 
Lane Chapel in Baltimore, this condition 
exacted by Mr. Asbury was cordially met. 
He was unanimously elected superintendent, 
and accepted the position granted him be- 
cause of that election — ^not because of Mr. 



Labors in America 



101 



Wesley's appointment. The men with 
whom he served, his associate itinerants, 
were to him the source of power — ^not the 
great leader across the Atlantic. 

Dr. Coke w^as also unanimously elected 
superintendent, and Dr. Coke also ac- 
cepted such election. Whether he saw the 
far-reaching importance of his action in 
accepting at the hands of his brethren cre- 
dentials to the position which he afterward 
so successfully filled ; whether he saw what 
might have resulted had he rested on his 
possible rights to go ahead under the ap- 
pointment which he already had received 
from ]Mr. Wesley and w^hich Mr. Wesley 
apparently thought final, we do not know. 
Indeed, 'tis doubtful if anyone at that time 
saw^ the radical nature of the step they had 
taken. A group of societies arbitrarily ruled 
as few men dare or care to rule their own 
households, and a Church with conditions of 
membership created by the members them- 
selves or by their representatives, are not 
one and the same ; and at this remove men 
readily so admit. At the Christmas Con- 
ference, how^ever, and for a few years after- 
ward the severance between the two was 
] not detected. At the Christmas Conference 
I it was declared: ^^During the life of Mr. 



102 Thomas Coke 



Wesley, we acknowledge ourselves his sons 
in the gospel, ready in matters belonging to 
church government to obey his commands. 
And we do engage, after his death, to do 
everything that we judge consistent with 
the cause of religion in America and the 
political interests of these States, to pre- 
serve and promote our union with the 
Methodists in Europe." This filial arrange- 
ment lasted for three years — -no longer. In- 
deed, there seems to have been a reaction, 
for Mr. Wesley's request to have Mr. 
Whatcoat "appointed" superintendent with 
Mr. Asbury in 1787 was refused. It was 
not till 1800 — thirteen years later—that the 
request was granted; and then not because 
Mr. Wesley requested it, but because What- 
coat deserved it. Still, the chances are that 
Dr. Coke did see the serious importance of 
his action. Many a possibility must have 
been foreseen by Mr. Wesley and himself as 
they worked their way through to a radical 
conclusion; many a possibility as Dr. Coke 
read the exhaustive arguments of Bishop 
Hoadley while crossing the Atlantic ; many 
a possibility as Francis Asbury stepped for- 
ward with his blunt and peremptory con- 
dition. 

Surely Mr. Wesley saw quite speedily 



Labors in America 



103 



what it all meant. Said he to Mr. What- 
coat: 'It was not well judged of Brother 
Asbury to sufifer, much less indirectly en- 
courage, the foolish step in the last Confer- 
ence. Every preacher present ought, both 
in duty and in prudence, to have said, 
'Brother Asbury, Mr. Wesley is your father, 
consequently ours.' Candor will affirm this 
in the face of the world. It is highly prob- 
able that disallowing me will, as soon as 
my head is laid, occasion a total breach be- 
tween the English and American Metho- 
dists. They will naturally say, 'If they can 
do without us, we can do without them.' " 

Providential, then, was Dr, Coke's ac- 
quiescence. Had he stood out for Mr. 
Wesley's absolute authority, for his pro- 
prietorship over the new Church — though 
no longer a group of "societies" — for his 
right to appoint as superintendent whomso- 
ever he might name, Methodism would have 
been seriously crippled at her birth. As it 
was, he showed that he possessed the char- 
acteristics which he told Mr. Wesley the 
man sent to America should possess — "in- 
fluence, prudence, and delicacy of conduct." 



CHAPTER VIII 



A BISHOP INDEED 

"I PREACHED the funeral sermon for Dr. 
Coke/' writes Bishop Asbury in his journal 
for May 21, 1815, ''a gentleman, a scholar, 
and to us a bishop/' 

So the Methodist Church has always 
considered him — a bishop indeed, ever 
abundant in labor and alert in independent 
and sagacious leadership. 

He gladly went where his preachers had 
to go. He met without murmur their hard- 
ships, experienced their privations and per- 
secutions, lived their simple life. ^'A\\ the 
property I have gained is two old horses,'' 
writes Asbury to Coke as the latter was 
about to sail for the West Indies in 1792, 
''the constant companions of my toil six or 
seven thousand miles every year. When 
we have no ferr3^boats they swim the rivers. 
As to clothing, I am nearly the same as at 
first ; neither have I silver nor gold, nor any 
other property." So Thomas Coke would 
gladly have said, if wealth had not been 
forced upon him ; as it was, he did his best 
104 



A Bishop Indeed 



105 



to Spurn intimate acquaintance with pros-, 
perity. "Our journeys in the back parts of 
CaroHna and Georgia/' writes he, ''were 
very trying. Sometimes we lost our way; 
in one instance twenty-one miles. In gen- 
eral nothing but bacon and eggs, with In- 
dian corn. Mr. Asbury had brought with 
him. some tea and sugar. In several places 
we had to lie on the floor; which indeed 
I regarded not, though my bones were a 
little sore in the mornings." Time and time 
again he lost his way through the trackless 
forests ; once at least he was nearly drowned 
at a treacherous ford. He met the sum- 
mer's heat and the winter's chill as the 
humble itinerant of the day met them, and 
thought it no hardship. His food was 
frequently the scantiest and the poorest. 
''Many times we ate nothing from seven in 
the morning till six in the evening," he 
tells us in the record of a trip that he made 
with Bishop Asbury, "though sometimes we 
I took our repast on stumps of trees near 
I some spring of water." He met genuine 
j and most bitter opposition. "A high-headed 
lady," he tells us of one experience, "told 
the rioters that she would give fifty pounds 
if they would give that little Doctor one 
hundred lashes. When I came out, they 



106 Thomas Coke 



surrounded me but had only power to talk." 
Notwithstanding all this — ignorance of the 
country, the taste and training of the 
scholar of ease and refinement, the petty 
irritations of the misguided, malicious peo- 
ple to whom he sought to minister — he 
moved steadily forward preaching from 
place to place, at times to throngs of people. 
''On the Lord's Day,'' he tells us, ''though 
there was no town within a great many 
miles of the spot, I think there were about 
four thousand hearers. We here ordained 
five deacons in public, and it was a very 
solemn and profitable time." 

One year's record reads like all the 
others, simply necessitating a change of 
names and dates. He was always on the 
move and always preaching. During his 
fourth visit to America, for example, he 
sought to find out from personal observa- 
tion the status of the Church wherever it 
was established. Methodism stretched over 
an area of two thousand miles. There were 
seven Annual Conferences, so called. It 
was Dr. Coke's desire to preside at each of 
these, if possible. He started on his tour of 
investigation at Charleston, where he held 
a South Carolina Conference. He next 
moved toward Georgia; thence to North 



A Bishop Indeed 107 



Carolina. *'Every night before we con- 
cluded/* writes he of the Conference there, 
''heaven itself seemed to be opened in our 
souls. One of the preachers was so blessed 
in the course of our prayers that he was con- 
strained to cry, 'I was never so happy in my 
life before. O what a heaven of heavens 
do I feel r " From North CaroHna he v/ent 
on to Virginia, where two Conferences were 
held. While in Port Royal he was told of 
the death of Mr. Wesley. He determined to 
hasten back to England, feeling that he was 
needed there, and possibly anticipating his 
selection as Mr. Wesley's successor. At 
Baltimore he preached a funeral sermon on 
the text, "And Elisha saw it, and he cried, 
My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, 
and the horsemen thereof/' After a few 
days' delay through sickness he reached 
Newcastle, whence he sailed for London, 
having been away from England less than 
a year. 

His hardships, however, seemed to have 
given him little concern. He ever saw 
something to rejoice over. "There is 
something exceedingly pleasing,'^ he tells 
us, "in preaching daily to large congrega- 
tions in immense forests. ... It is one of 
my most delicate enjoyments to engulf my- 



108 Thomas Coke 



self, if I may so express it, in the woods. 
I seem then to be detached from everything 
but the quiet creation and my God." In 
Virginia he says: "All was delightful ex- • 
cept the sight of a great cruel hawk which ^ 
was devouring a little squirrel on a rock. 
The oaks have opened out their leaves ; and 
the dogwood tree, whose bark is medicinal, 
and whose innumerable white flowers form 
one of the finest ornaments of the forest, 
was in full bloom. The deep green of the 
pines, the bright transparent green of the 
oaks, and the fine white of the flowers of 
the dogwood, with other trees and shrubs, 
form such a complication of beauties as are 
indescribable to those who have lived in 
countries entirely cultivated." As one reads 
these words he thinks of the greatest 
Teacher of all, who could see the sparrow 
fall, hear the ravens cry for their food, 
straighten the bruised reed, and find delight 
in the lilies of the field. Surely the hard- 
ships of the itinerancy did not crush from 
the soul of Thomas Coke that poetry and 
tenderness of sympathy that are charms 
even in the lives of the greatest. 

Yet his labors were his least gift to the 
Church. His leadership and life were of 
far more worth. 



A Bishop Indeed 109 



And leadership he gave : not that leader- 
ship that others create and place in one's 
hands; not that representative leadership 
solely that is the boast of complacent breth- 
ren elevated for reasons no man can fathom 
to positions of trust and power ; not that 
tardy leadership that reveals itself only 
when it finds no way whereby to avoid a 
forward step ; not the leadership that is 
claimed when the battle is well-nigh won 
and the shrewd ear detects the first note of 
victory; not the leadership that accom- 
plishes its purpose because its plans are con- 
serv^ative and always found well labeled 
upon the beaten path: but leadership that 
one's brain and heart and independent judg- 
ment show to be the need of the hour. He 
was a bishop indeed. ■> 

Three evidences of his miastery of the 
conditions of his day may be cited in this 
brief portrayal of his worth to the Church. 

First, his recognition of the government 
of the new Republic. He placed ?^Iethodist 
patriotism second only to ^Methodist piety. 
On May 29, 1789, immediately after the 
inauguration of George Washington as 
President, a letter was presented to him 
signed by Thomias Coke and Francis As- 
bur\' expressing the sincere congratulations 



1 1 0 Thomas Coke 



they felt ''in behalf of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church" on his elevation to his high- 
office. In this address they referred to the 
recent ''glorious Revolution/' to the ''most 
excellent constitution of these States, which 
is at present the admiration of the world, 
and may in future become its great ex- 
emplar for imitation." They promised their 
most "fervent prayers at the throne of 
grace" that God Almighty might endue the 
new President "with all the graces and gifts 
of his Holy Spirit" ; they expressed to the 
President their fullest confidence in his 
wisdom and integrity, and said that they 
were moved to speak as they did because of 
the "warm feelings of the heart." The 
address was read by Francis Asbury, 
though it bears evidence in its ardor and 
literary style to be the work of Thomas 
Coke. His signature precedes that of As- 
bury. "The President," says Mr. Morrell, 
who secured the audience with General 
Washington and who was present through- 
out the interview, "read his reply with ani- 
mation." 

And well he might. A Church at last, 
though established only a few years before 
— a Church of the people with thousands 
of loyal soldiers in its membership, one of 



A Bishop Indeed 1 1 1 



them Major Morrell, now a representative 
minister— a Church as a Church deHberately 
though fervently pledges its support to the 
institutions and the land he loved and for 
which he had risked his life. It was no 
little thing to lead the Church to do with 
such dignity so gracious a deed, and 
Thomas Coke was large enough to see it. 
That he paid the price for this forward step 
when next he returned to England shows 
the estimation of its worth if not its wisdom 
on the part of his English associates. He 
was formally rebuked by his Wesleyan 
brethren in the old home, "and the judg- 
ment was unanimous," writes one who 
plainly holds the same opinion, an English 
biographer, ''that as a subject of the Eng- 
lish monarchy the Doctor had departed 
from propriety in signing the address ; that 
it was apparent to himself, as well as 
to others, that he had been indiscreet." 
Whether he thought so or not amid the 
hostile surroundings of a sensitive and de- 
feated people we do not know. We are 
fully persuaded that his act was the act of 
a leader, and that the Church hold^ an en- 
viable position because of it. 

Very speedily Dr. Coke took steps both in 
America and England toward what we call 



1 1 2 Thomas Coke 



Church unity. Each of these steps was un- 
successful, and one of them he himself 
afterward regretted; yet each was the for- 
ward step of a leader, and the Church need 
never to be ashamed of them. In America 
he sought for nothing less than a formal 
union between the two Episcopal bodies — 
the Methodist Episcopal and the Protestant 
Episcopal Churches. He entered into cor- 
respondence with Bishop White soon after 
the O'Kelly schism in Methodism, looking 
toward organic union. He stipulated that 
the status of Methodism should be recog- 
nized, that her ministerial orders should be 
considered valid, and that the Church 
should surrender none of its peculiar 
usages. *'Our ordained ministers will not, 
ought not, to give up their right of ad- 
ministering the sacraments," writes he to 
Bishop White, April 24, 1791. It was his 
thought that both he and Bishop Asbury 
retain their powers as bishops. He had n6 
scruple, however, to ^'submit to a reimposi- 
tion of hands in order to accomplish a great 
object." Bishop White was kindly dis- 
posed toward the plan. His Church, how- 
ever, overruled it. Bishop Coke never sub- 
mitted the plan to his own Church. He 
went ahead alone along a venturesome way. 



A Bishop Indeed 1 1 3 



His work in England was of a similar 
character. In 1798 he wrote to the Bishop 
of London concerning what he called "the 
necessity of securing the great body of 
Methodists to the Church of England/' "I 
am inclined to think/' writes he, ''that if a 
given number of our leading preachers, 
proposed by our General Conference, were 
to be ordained and permitted to travel 
through our Connection to administer the 
sacraments to those societies , . . evtry diffi- 
culty would be removed. I have no doubt 
that the people would be universally satis- 
fied. The men of greatest influence in the 
Connection would, I am sure, unite with 
me; and every deviation from the Church 
of England would be done away." In all 
probability, had the plan met the approval 
of the leaders of the Church of England, it 
would have been formally presented, for Dr. 
Coke had the support of some of his oldest 
and wisest associates. ''I have no doubt," 
I said he, ''they would lay down their lives 
I with joy if they could see so happy a plan ac- 
^ complished." Said ]\Ir. Pawson, one of the 
Wesleyan leaders, in 1793 : "We should con- 
sider our present circumstances and en- 
deavor to agree upon some method by 
I which our people may have the ordinances 



1 14 Thomas Coke 



of God and at the same time be preserved 
from division. I care not a rush whether 
it be Episcopal or Presbyterian." Probably 
many others as well ''cared not a rush" pro- 
vided something might be done that would 
make for security and the continuance of 
the work. 

The suggestion, however, was refused by 
the archbishop to whom the Bishop of Lon- 
don with guarded approval had submitted 
it. Its merits were not considered ; neither 
were they denied nor referred to in the 
answer. The reason for this step toward 
unity possibly unwisely advanced by Dr. 
Coke — the prejudice of his people ''against 
receiving the Lord's Supper from the hands 
of immoral clergymen" — and two or three 
details in the plan that might easily have 
been modified were given as the cause of its 
rejection. 

What might have happened had this over- 
ture been received and acted upon sincerely 
and s)mipathetically, no man can say. Pos- 
sibly the divisions of the Church of Christ 
have become a part of the wrath of man 
that God has made to praise him, the dis- 
cordant notes that make for higher harmony 
in some great outburst of praise— possibly. 
Possibly they have been the shame and 



A Bishop Indeed 



115 



enigma of Christendom. Possibly they are 
doomed to be no more in some glorious 
day after to-morrow. *The hour cometh, 
when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor 
yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father"; 
when forms and merely verbal confessions 
of faith, sanctified shibboleths of all kinds, 
will be done away with — most surely such 
as have to do with the minute regulations 
of man, adopted too frequently by a bare 
majority vote in haste if not in anger. Dr. 
Coke used to say that he "would not have a 
hand in anything that would tend to a 
division in the societies for ten thousand 
worlds." The same spirit undoubtedly 
moved him to work for reunion wherever 
such division existed. He waited not for 
some humbler brother to say the word or 
do the deed, that he might see how some 
venturesome step would be considered be- 
fore expressing himself ; he had no thought 
of the effect of his action upon his own 
standing, whether he might because of it 
be the less or the more acceptable to his 
brethren; he was not enamored of the 
charms of the Delphic oracle. He saw 
clearly and spoke truly and left the results 
to his God. 

It was this spirit that led him to take em- 



1 1 6 Thomas Coke 



phatic stand in the South against negro 
slavery. In his journal for May 26, 1785, 
he writes: "Mr. Asbury and I set off for 
General Washington's. We were engaged 
to dine there. . . . After dinner we opened 
to him the grand business, presenting to 
him our petition (agreed upon by the late 
Conference) for the emancipation of the 
negroes, and entreating his signature, if 
the eminence of his station did not render 
that inexpedient. He informed us that he 
was of our sentiments, and had signified 
his thoughts on the subject to most of the 
great men of the State ; that he did not see 
it proper to sign the petition; but if the 
Assembly took it into consideration he 
would signify his sentiments to the Assem- 
bly by a letter." In 1784, at the Christmas 
Conference, the question was asked, ''What 
methods can we take to extirpate slavery?" 
The answer given was : ''We are deeply con- 
scious of the impropriety of making new 
terms of communion for a religious society 
already established, excepting on the most 
pressing occasion ; and such we esteem the 
practice of holding our fellow creatures in 
slavery. We view it as contrary to the 
golden law of God, on which hang all the 
law and the prophets, and to the inalienable 



A Bishop Indeed 



117 



rights of mankind, as well as every prin- 
ciple of the Revolution, to hold in the deep- 
est debasement, in a more abject slavery 
than is, perhaps, to be found in any part of 
the world except America, so many souls 
that are capable of the image of God.'^'"*-^ 
Surely these are the deeds and the words 
of a leader. He sees where influence may 
best be secured and mioves forward to se- 
cure it; he speaks in no uncertain way re- 
garding what he believes to be w^rong, and 
yet with great consideration for those who 
differ with him. Not every leader or every 
Conference has been equally conscious of 
the "impropriety of making new terms of 
communion for a religious society already 
established." He was a bishop indeed. 

Yet he will ever be best remembered — 
or should be — as the founder of Methodist 
missions. ''Only let them be informed," 
writes he of the missionaries of 1804, ''that 
they may correspond with me as their 
friend and father in the most friendly and 
familiar manner." 

He was a bishop indeed, and therefore 
the friend and father of missions and mis- 
sionaries. In all respects he was a leader. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE FOUNDER OF WESLEYAN MISSIONS 

Thomas Coke must be brought back by 
a grateful Church more heartily and more 
generally than he has been to his place 
among her missionaries. He must be given 
the honor that should never have been 
denied him. He is preeminently the founder 
of Methodist missions. 

He could not well have been anything 
else. He was living in the day and in the 
place and among the conditions that called 
for leadership, and, by the grace of God, 
was uniquely qualified by his characteristics 
of temper and thought. His visions were 
ever large and insistent : his ambitions knew 
no limit. He could say that he was willing 
''to be anything or nothing, as the Lord 
pleased ; to be employed or laid aside as he 
judged proper.'' He could say so, and did; 
yet could write immediately after this sen- 
tence of humility and trust, "I had sincerely 
loved God for many years, and had no am- 
bition but to be the instrument, immediately 
or remotely, of converting millions to him." 
ii8 



Founder of Wesleyan Missions 1 1 9 

He could talk about being "laid aside'' one 
moment, and the next about his dream 
through his agency of the conversion of 
millions. 

Yet, if he dealt with millions in his dream, 
he painstakingly cared for units in the pro- 
saic work of everyday life. "I cannot re- 
pent/' writes he, ''of the thousands of hours 
which I have spent in at once the most vile, 
most glorious drudgery of begging from 
house to house. The tens of thousands of 
pounds which I have raised for the mis- 
sions, and the beneficial effects thereof, 
form an ample compensation for all the 
time and all the labor." He could dream of 
continents and millions of converts; he 
could spend day after day — ''thousands of 
hours" — as a beggar from house to house 
seeking the gifts of the rich and the poor. 

He loved the common people; by nature 
an aristocrat, by the grace of God and com- 
pelling circumstance a man of the people. 
He gladly worked among the negroes in the 
West Indies, the Indians on our frontier, 
the most degraded and debased of men and 
women wherever he might find them. On 
January 5, 1787, he writes of his work in 
Antigua : "I have preached in the town 
twice a day; the house full half an hour 



120 Thomas Coke 



before the time. Our society in this island 
is near two thousand; but the ladies and 
gentlemen of the town have so filled the 
house that the poor dear negroes who built 
it have been almost entirely shut out except 
in the mornings. . . . Last week my brethren 
and self were invited by the company of 
merchants to dine with Prince William 
Henry." One day with the ''poor dear 
negroes/' the next with the heir to the Eng- 
lish throne ! 

His emotions were deep and abiding. 
When he found that he could not command 
the assent of his brethren to his plans for 
missionary work in India, his heart was 
w^ell-nigh broken. He w^ept as he walked 
along the streets to his lodgings; he spent 
the entire night on the floor in humble prayer 
to God; he cried from the depths of a 
troubled soul for the salvation of a people 
thousands of miles away. The next morn- 
ing he came to the Conference determined 
to make one more plea. He spoke of the 
guiding hand of Providence ; of the obliga- 
tion of the Church to carry the gospel news 
to the nations that knew not the Lord, and 
then of¥ered ''to dare with himself the 
dangers of the enterprise," saying that he 
was "prepared to defray the expenditure 



Founder of Wesleyan Missions 1 2 1 

necessary to the outfit and commencement 
of the work to the extent of six thousand 
pounds." He so loved the common people, 
the outcast and the heathen, that others 
had to love them too. 'Tis needless to say 
the Conference granted that appeal, and 
that the missionary conception in its large- 
ness and glory was received that hour for 
the first time by our Church. 

He cared mainly for results. He had no 
great concern how they were reached, or 
under whose leadership, provided God was 
honored. He never contended for the 
recognition that might rightly have been 
his after the death of Mr. Wesley. Even 
in Ireland, where for years he had been 
considered as leader, he took a subordinate 
position during the days of suspicion and 
apparent jealousy immediately following 
Mr. Wesley's death. When first he caught 
a vision of the possibility of w^ork in India, 
and saw the apparent futility of hope of 
support on the part of his associates, he im- 
pulsively turned to the Church of his youth. 
He offered himself as bishop for India — 
and sought such position and recognition 
from the Church of England. He who had 
been the inspiration of hundreds of societies 
of the Wesleyan Connection, who was 



122 Thomas Coke 



ranked among them as first superintendent 
if not bishop, who was recognized by many 
as John Wesley's successor in fact if not in 
name, dared to risk his reputation and if 
necessar)^ to break with the associates of his 
maturer years for the sake of the larger 
Church of Christ and the advancement of his 
kingdom. ^1 am not so much wanted in our 
Connection at home,'' writes he to WilHam 
Wilberforce, *^as I was. . . . There is nothing 
to influence me much against going to India 
but my extensive sphere for preaching the 
gospel. ... I am not conscious that the least 
degree of ambition influences me in this 
business. I possess a fortune of about 
twelve hundred pounds a year, which is 
sufficient to bear my traveling expenses and 
to enable me to make many charitable do- 
nations. ... I sincerely believe that my 
strong inclination to spend the remainder of 
my life in India originates in the divine will, 
whilst I am called upon to use the secondary 
means to obtain the end." And to him they 
were secondary : the Church of Christ first, 
his own Church or societies next. He cared 
for results. He was ready to let the credit 
for his achievement go where it might go. 
AH that he wanted was to get the story of 
his Lord clearly told to men who had never 



Founder of Wesleyan Missions 123 



heard it. The result was all-important ; not 
the means used to attain it. 

It is not to be wondered at that he was 
ever conscious of the presence of his Lord. 
*'He alone began it," he writes, ''he alone 
increased it, and, if I may presume so to 
express myself, he has bound himself to 
support it. He therefore, before I sailed, 
said to the North, 'Bring forth,' and to the 
South, 'Keep not back.' The West also is 
coming forward. The sister island has 
taken the flame and the highly favored 
British Isles combine to spread our mis- 
sions throughout the world. How light it 
has made m.y heart! Next to union and 
communion with my God, nothing could 
afford me such high satisfaction. I hasten 
to Asia with alacrity and joy; and yet must 
confess that if the clouds had been ever so 
obscure, if all human aid had apparently 
been withdrawn from those missions, the 
interests of which are so deeply interwoven 
with the very strings of my heart, my divine 
call to Asia has been so indubitably clear 
that I should have been obliged to throw 
everything into the hands of my God and 
to say to him, 'Here I am; send me to 
Asia.' " 

Surely, then, Thomas Coke was su- 



124 Thomas Coke 



premely endowed by God with the gifts and 
graces that make the great missionary. He 
failed not to use them. His name will ever 
be associated with the West Indies and with 
India. England, Ireland, and America may 
lay claim to him ; others can claim as well 
and as justly. The world was his parish in 
fact as well as plan or prayer. His second 
trip to America brought him providentially 
to the West Indies. He had planned to go 
to Nova Scotia, having heard of the need 
of Wesleyan work there. The storms of 
the wild Atlantic drove his little vessel far 
toward the South, and he entered the open 
door of opportunity. Ever after this the 
West Indies were strangely dear to him. 
He knew and loved both islands and peo- 
ple. The Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Eusta- 
tius, Saint Vincent, Saint Kitts are names 
that were suggestive to him of tender 
associations. "If I were to turn hermit," 
writes he, 'T should fix on this place, where 
I could fix an observatory on one of the 
peaks and spend my time in communion with 
God and in the study of astronomy and 
botany." 

His tendencies, however, were of another 
character. He had no desire to "turn 
hermit," no matter what he might say re- 



Founder of Wesleyan Missions 125 

garding the charms of a soHtary hfe. He 
was ever among the people. He visited 
from island to island, preaching, teaching, 
settling controversies, and holding con- 
ferences. The minutes of a Conference 
held with the preachers of the Windw^ard 
Islands during Dr. Coke's fifth trip to Amer- 
ica show that there were twelve preachers 
present, representing a membership in the 
societies of between six and seven thou- 
sand. A large proportion of this number 
was made up of negroes. '^They have been 
brought out of heathenish darkness more 
or less to a knowledge of the truth and of 
themselves. They have left, so far as we 
can find,'' writes he, "all their outward sins, 
even polygamy itself; and a considerable 
part of them give so clear and rational an 
account of their conversion and of the in- 
fluence of religion upon their hearts and 
lives as is exceedingly animating and en- 
couraging to their pastors." 

It is with India, however, that his name 
will ever be associated. He was never per- 
mitted to reach her shores, for he died and 
was committed to the mercy of the waves 
of the Indian Ocean — to the sea that with 
all other seas of mystery at the last must 
give up its dead. He died on his errand 



126 Thomas Coke 



o£ holy conquest, but his work can never 
die. Said he in the last sermon he preached 
in England, about to set sail with seven 
other missionaries: *'Let me furthermore 
beseech you not to estimate the probability 
of our success by the insignificance of the 
instruments; the work is of God. There 
was a time when Christianity itself had in 
all human probability less to hope. The 
powers which now favor us were hostile 
to it ; and yet in three hundred years it rose 
upon the ruin of paganism. Who can say 
that a similar result may not take place 
among the millions of India, whose future 
generations shall rise up and call us 
blessed?" 

On the 30th of December, 1813, he set 
sail for the shores of Ceylon. In his ship 
there were four hundred people. ''We have 
among us,'' writes he, "some Portuguese, 
natives of India. I wish we may be useful 
to them. In the dining-room our number 
is twenty-six, including the captain and his 
two officers. They are very polite ; but, O, 
we want to save souls." 

Travel in those early days of missionary 
venture was not what it is now. The seas 
were more to be dreaded; for the tempests 
were not met amid the security that men 



Founder of Wesleyan Missions 127 

feel to-day. On the 19th of January one of 
the merchant ships saiHng with them was 
heard firing guns of distress. She was 
never afterward seen or heard of. On the 
24th six more ships were missing, one of 
them a large Indiaman, the Fort William. 
A little later he writes: '*We had the mel- 
ancholy sight of a sailor belonging to an- 
other vessel falHng from the topgallant yard 
into the sea. It does not appear that he 
could be saved by any exertions." A little 
later the wife of one of the missionaries 
sickened and died; and then a Httle later 
God came to call Thomas Coke. 

At half-past five on the morning of the 
3d of May, 1 814, the messenger who came 
to arouse him, getting no answer, pushed 
open the door and found him dead upon the 
floor. He had not been ill for any length 
of time; indeed, no one thought that his 
illness was of a serious nature. The surgeon 
on the ship said that death was occasioned 
by apoplexy. That day, late in the after- 
noon, the burial service was read, and all 
that was mortal was committed to the 
waves. 

In the priory church at Brecon, his birth- 
place, there is an epitaph, though his body 
lies not there. The monument was erected 



128 Thomas Coke 



in 1828 by the "ministers and missionaries 
with whom he was united/' It bears testi- 
mony to his zealous ministry; his gen- 
erosity; his unremitting vigor; to his 
c leadership in the cause of Wesleyan mis- 
sions. It says much, and other monuments 
say much — not the least a grateful Church ; 
yet Thomas Coke must ever be considered 
among the living and not the dead. Such 
men can never die. 



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